[Rd] user defined macros in Rd files

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13-10-12 6:49 PM, R. Michael Weylandt <michael.weylandt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Oct 9, 2013, at 21:18, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 13-10-09 7:54 PM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On my related wishlist: A standardized mechanism to 'R CMD build' for
>>> building man/*.Rd from any input format (e.g. roxygen and so on)
>>> analogously how we can now build vignettes of any input format.  With
>>> that in place, it would a be piece of cake to include macros from
>>> external files.
>>>
>>> Just wanted to throw it out there.
>>
>> No, we certainly won't do that.  We rely on being able to process the Rd files in multiple ways.
>>
>
> I'm a but confused here Duncan:
>
> Henrik's proposal still results in the Rd files being created and then all of the cool things which get done (example checking, HTML, PDF, etc.) can carry on as usual. Since those are all done from the tarball by R CMD build, they can't know how the Rd files were created in the first place.
>
> Can you say a bit more about what would break? I'm afraid I'm missing something obvious.

I was assuming he wanted to build the help system from another format. 
If he just wants to build a standard *.Rd file from something else, then 
why get "R CMD build" involved?  Why not just do it in two steps, "make 
the help, build the tarball"?   He'll have to clarify, but the comment 
about vignettes makes me think I'm right:  you can have a vignette in 
any format, and you just need a way to convert it to HTML or PDF, it 
doesn't need to become a Sweave document first.

Duncan Murdoch