[Rd] Improvement in hist command documentation
Martin Maechler
m@ech|er @end|ng |rom @t@t@m@th@ethz@ch
Wed Oct 2 08:50:01 CEST 2019
>>>>> Jérôme LAURENS
>>>>> on Tue, 1 Oct 2019 11:47:38 +0200 writes:
> Hi all,
> In the histogram created with the `hist` command, the label of the y axis reads "Frequency ».
> Finding that the ylab key is used to change (localize) that word may seem difficult for people
> who are beginners either in R or in english.
> I suggest very minor modifications of the file hist.Rd at https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/graphics/man/hist.Rd.
> 1) make the default value for ylab explicit, similarly to main and xlab
> 2) make the word "label" explicitly appear in the documentation for the ylab key
> That way, people looking either for the word "label" or the word "Frequency" in hist’s help will get more chance to find the ylab key.
> Here is the diff with revision 77240
> 17c17
> < xlab = xname, ylab,
> ---
>> xlab = xname, ylab = "Frequency",
> 65,66c65,66
> < \item{main, xlab, ylab}{these arguments to \code{title} have useful
> < defaults here.}
> ---
>> \item{main, xlab, ylab}{to change the default value of the main title,
>> the label of the x axis or the label of the y axis.}
> Thanks for your efforts.
> JL
Thank you, Jérôme, for helping to improve R's documentation.
I was hoping others would point out that your '1)' is wrong
unfortunately: As the current doc say - not optimally -
" these arguments ... have useful defaults here "
and the default for ylab is not just "Frequency", and the whole
thing is a bit more subtle than you think notably because a
"histogram" object is constructed with a plot method, etc.
Please look at the source code the development of which code is
always visible here
https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/graphics/R/hist.R
But you are right that the
\item{main, xlab, ylab}{these arguments to \code{title} have useful
defaults here.}
can be improved and I will do so, ensuring that 'label' will
appear there.
Best regards,
Martin Maechler,
ETH Zurich and R Core Team
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