[Rd] NEWS.md support on CRAN

Gavin Simpson ucfagls at gmail.com
Thu Jun 4 18:00:13 CEST 2015 

Mark,

You're conflating issues here andTwo things I think you are missing:

1. Markdown was designed to be as readable as possible in plain text format
(i.e. the sources, not the rendered file). There's nothing stopping you
reading and parsing a NEWS.md in your head trivially.

2. The proposal here is to have R render the NEWS.md natively, and display
it in your browser using it's own webserver (which it already has).

Rd markup is verbose, like LaTeX, and not really needed for a NEWS file.
But you need *something* if R is going to do something with it, it's just
that that thing need not be Rd markup.

Your point about NEWS actually containing something useful for the user is
an important one.

G

On 4 June 2015 at 09:05, Mark van der Loo <mark.vanderloo at gmail.com> wrote:

> FWIW (and a bit late in the discussion, I know), I for one do not care
> about having NEWS in md format at all.
>
> The solution the Yihui uses (linking to GH from NEWS.Rd) is really annoying
> for people with no direct Internet access. For example, I work at an
> institute that handles a lot of private data and most VM's with R on it
> have no direct internet access for that reason (of course internet is
> accessible but through an application running on a separate VM).
>
> Moreover, I as a user also do not care at all about links to GH #issues and
> which @user did what for each issue. These are details that are useful for
> people developing the package or for people who reported a bug. As a user I
> just want to read a short description like "bugfix: function f crashed on
> input y", or "function g is deprecated" without having to first navigate to
> another website.
>
> The most important thing about the NEWS is that it is easy to find (so in a
> fixed place), and aimed at users, not developers. It should come with the
> software, so it is also available when GH is offline or replaced with
> something new (since hey, didn't we all have a sourceforge or google code
> account in our younger days?).
>
> In short, I think that added value of NEWS.md is fairly limited but it does
> increase the risk of dispersing the NEWS all over the web.
>
> Best,
> Mark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Op wo 3 jun. 2015 om 08:32 schreef Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik at wu.ac.at>:
>
> > >>>>> Duncan Murdoch writes:
> >
> > > On 02/06/2015 11:05 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> > >> Hi Kurt,
> > >>
> > >> On 1 June 2015 at 14:02, Kurt Hornik wrote:
> > >> | >>>>> peter dalgaard writes:
> > >> |
> > >> | >> On 30 May 2015, at 01:20 , Imanuel Costigan <i.costigan at me.com>
> > wrote:
> > >> | >>
> > >> | >> So I assume this commit means NEWS.md is now no longer on
> > blacklist?
> > >> | >>
> > >> |
> > >> | > ....in the development version. Not true of released versions.
> > >> |
> > >> | Now also in r-patched.
> > >>
> > >> Nice.
> > >>
> > >> Now, is there a way for package authors to preview how a .md would be
> > >> rendered?  I wrote mine with GitHub in mind, and they render fine. I
> > looked a
> > >> recently-uploaded README.md of mine on CRAN, and it got some of the
> > pandoc-y
> > >> parts wrong --- and looks unprofessional.
> > >>
> > >> I would like to avoid that.  How can I?
> >
> > > In the short term, you should probably try to run pandoc with the same
> > > version and options as CRAN.  Kurt, can you say what these are?  If you
> > > (Dirk) know pandoc options that emulate Github, it would probably make
> > > sense for CRAN to use those.
> >
> > Sure.  We currently have
> >
> > pandoc 1.12.4.2
> > Compiled with texmath 0.6.6.1, highlighting-kate 0.5.8.5.
> >
> > which we use with --email-obfuscation=references.
> >
> > Best
> > -k
> >
> > > In the longer term, the plan is to include our own parser and renderer.
> > > At that point this would be easy.
> >
> > > Duncan Murdoch
> > >>
> > >> Dirk
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> | -k
> > >> |
> > >> | > -pd
> > >> |
> > >> |
> > >> | >>
> >
> https://github.com/wch/r-source/commit/9ffe87264a1cd59a31a829f72d57af0f1bfa327a
> > >> | >>
> > >> | >> Sent from my iPad
> > >> | >>
> > >> | >> On 23 May 2015, at 6:05 pm, Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik at wu.ac.at>
> > wrote:
> > >> | >>
> > >> | >>>>>>>> Duncan Murdoch writes:
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>>>> On 22/05/2015 8:49 PM, Imanuel Costigan wrote:
> > >> | >>>>> Are there any plans for CRAN to support NEWS files in
> markdown?
> > Bit of a hassle to go the the package’s Github (or other like) site to
> read
> > NEWS.
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>>> Not as far as I know.  There have been discussions about
> > increasing the
> > >> | >>>> support of Markdown, but so far the conclusion has been that
> > it's too
> > >> | >>>> hard to do -- the support is not stable enough on all the
> > platforms
> > >> | >>>> where R runs.
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>> There are actually two issues here.
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>> For CRAN, we could in principle take inst/NEWS.md files, convert
> > these
> > >> | >>> to HTML using pandoc, and use the HTML for the package web page.
> > (Would
> > >> | >>> need the CRAN incoming checks to be taught about inst/NEWS.md.)
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>> However, we cannot use such files for utils::news() because we
> do
> > not
> > >> | >>> (yet?) know how to reliably parse such files and extract the
> news
> > items
> > >> | >>> (and hence cannot really compute on the news information).
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>> Btw, currently only one package on CRAN has inst/NEWS.md
> (another
> > one
> > >> | >>> has NEWS.md at top level).
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>> Best
> > >> | >>> -k
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>>> Markdown is allowed for vignettes (because the package author
> > processes
> > >> | >>>> those), so I'd suggest putting your news into a vignette
> instead
> > of a
> > >> | >>>> news file.  Put in a token news file that points to the
> vignette
> > so
> > >> | >>>> users can find it.
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>>> Duncan Murdoch
> > >> | >>>
> > >> | >>>> ______________________________________________
> > >> | >>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > >> | >>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > >> | >>
> > >> | >> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> > >> | >>
> > >> | >> ______________________________________________
> > >> | >> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > >> | >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > >> |
> > >> | > --
> > >> | > Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
> > >> | > Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
> > >> | > Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> > >> | > Phone: (+45)38153501
> > >> | > Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
> > >> |
> > >> | > ______________________________________________
> > >> | > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > >> | > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > >> |
> > >> | ______________________________________________
> > >> | R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > >> | https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > >>
> >
> > > ______________________________________________
> > > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> >
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>



-- 
Gavin Simpson, PhD

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