[Rd] Jazzing up the Task Views index page

[Achim Zeileis]

Barry,

thanks for the ideas and the suggestion of a more interesting title page 
for the task views. Just a few comments from me as the person coordinating 
the task views on CRAN:

o The design of CRAN task view presentation/installation was chosen to be 
parallel to CRAN package presentation/installation. In particular, the 
task views are mirrored with the rest of CRAN and all links refer to the 
locally available package pages. Also, installation can be done from any 
repository.

o While this is good for distributing web services, it limits the 
possibilities in terms of web design. In think that the CRAN maintainers 
do not use Javascript, for example.

o Personally, I like the images used but I could imagine that some 
maintainers would prefer different pictures (e.g., a different 
visualization of a posterior for the Bayesian task view). But if the 
maintainers choose the images, it would be harder to assure a consistent 
design, I guess.

So there are some practical caveats when implementing such an approach. 
Certainly nothing insurmountable but maybe not very straightforward 
either. In any case, I will keep the "ctv" tools in sync with the general 
approach taken by CRAN.

Best,
Z

On Tue, 21 Feb 2012, Barry Rowlingson wrote:

> A little while ago here we had a short discussion about Task Views - I
> think ignited by someone saying 'how many times do I have to say "have
> you read the Optimisation Task View?"?' and I poured some fuel on that
> fire by saying "Task Views" was a stupid name.
>
> Anyway, I did say that Task Views were rather brilliant, but were let
> down by their hidden position on the R web sites (tucked away as the
> third element of a sub-menu of a CRAN mirror site linked to by the
> CRAN link from the Download menu on the main R home page). The index
> page is rather plain, so I designed a more engaging one. The result of
> my effort is now here:
>
> http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~rowlings/R/TaskViews/
>
> Having done that, I even considered that something like that could
> replace the R Homepage. Giving new visitors an idea of the vast range
> of techniques and application areas available in R would seem to be
> better than the current graphic which has been there since perhaps
> 2004.
>
> Comments, thoughts, flames, etc?
>
> Barry
>
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