[Rd] Task views

[Patrick Burns]

I feel compelled to rebuff Barry's
attack on the word "Task Views".
I think it is a fine description (I
was not involved in originating it),
though of course I'd be open to better
suggestions.

"Look at all these things you can do with R"
is also nice but lacks a certain amount
of brevity.

Pat

On 12/02/2012 10:43, Barry Rowlingson wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 5:55 PM, Patrick Burns<pburns at pburns.seanet.com>  wrote:
>
>> Now it could be that people are not trying
>> very hard to solve their own problems, but
>> to be fair it is a pretty gruelling process
>> to find the Task Views.
>>
>> May I suggest that there be a "Task Views" item
>> on the left sidebar of the R website in the
>> Documentation section?
>>
>
>   I'd go further, and suggest that the list of Task Views appears on
> the home page of www.r-project.org under the heading "Look at all
> these things you can do with R". (Maybe to replace the 8 year old
> clustering graphic (or maybe someone could do something in ggplot2
> that looks nice n shiny?) )
>
>   "Task Views" (stupid name, who's idea was that?) are an absolute GEM
> and shouldn't be slotted between 'What's New?' and "Search" on CRAN
> mirror sites. The CRAN Task Views page doesn't even say what "Task
> Views" are. Here's some text that might help:
>
>   "Task Views are short documents outlining the functionality of R in a
> given field or methodology. Since most of R's power comes from add-on
> packages downloaded from CRAN, Task Views tend to concentrate on
> summarising the packages that are relevant. If you ever find yourself
> thinking 'how do I do X in R?' then the list of Task Views should be
> your first stop."
>
> Barry
>

-- 
Patrick Burns
pburns at pburns.seanet.com
twitter: @portfolioprobe
http://www.portfolioprobe.com/blog
http://www.burns-stat.com
(home of 'Some hints for the R beginner'
and 'The R Inferno')