[Rd] SUGGESTION: R Base Packages

[frederik at ofb.net]

Hello!

Thanks to Juan for his suggestions. I would like to voice my opinion
for and against some of these.

> o   Add in Bugzilla an Area in order to request membership for bug reporting, which shall itself include another area to introduce a little dissertation for justifying "Why someone would like to be a member of Bugzilla" for being able to report proper bugs, and avoid spam.
> 
> o   Now, new R serious members cannot report properly bugs.

I too was annoyed by the state of the bug reporting system when I
first started using R, and that was even before automatic account
creation was disabled. I think the situation could be improved. I
don't think it's a huge burden to tell bug reporters to ask for an
account via the R-devel mailing list. But from what I can see the bug
tracker doesn't make it clear that this has to be done. We should at
least post a message on the main page explaining how people can create
an account. This would be less work than what Juan is suggesting, but
I think sufficient for our needs.

> *         That, in the R Base distribution, the following packages are included as default (pre-installed):
> 
> o   ggplot2.
> 
> o   dplyr.
> 
> o   tidyr.

I think this is a terrible idea. I've only been using R for a few
years and while I find these "tidyverse" packages interesting and use
them on occasion, I've also concluded that they change too quickly to
be used in code that I want to stay working for a long time. They are
largely based on experimental concepts. Being able to change and
evolve is part of the strength of these packages. So I think putting
them in the R Base distribution would be bad for all parties.

> *         And that, as regards R Project:
> 
> o   Improve the CRAN & R Project web pages, giving them a more modern look and feel (Such as the Python.org webpage), in order to "sell" better R to the everybody.
> 
> o   Improve the basic GUI distributed with R, with some of the core features of RStudio Desktop (GPL). Or even make RStudio Desktop to replace the R default GUI, with another name, in its executable version.
> 
> o   Enable a Suggestion web page / forum in the R Project webpage in order to boost core R Open Innovation.

I think the R project web page looks great. It's simple and it loads
quickly and doesn't try to mesmerize people. I like R's command line
interface. It completes on symbols and files and I can easily use it
with my favorite editor and run it in the terminal of my choice. I
don't think that more effort should be put into developing bloated
GUIs which try to enforce a standard way of interacting with R.

I think a "forum" or bulletin board system would be a detraction from
the project and a distraction for the project leaders. Users have
Stack Exchange - it's better than any forum we could create, and it
takes care of itself.

That's my two cents, more or less.

Thanks,

Frederick