[Rd] Small Fix: Greatly Increase Clarity/Utility of R Package Help/Manual Overview Pages

[Marsh, Samuel]

?Hi,


I would like to suggest a single line (2 characters) fix that I feel would greatly improve the readability and usefulness of the overview R package help/manual pages.  Currently the overall help/manual page for a package is organized into alphabetized table of contents with linked headers by letter only if the package contains more than 100 functions, otherwise the functions are simply listed with no line breaks.  This makes for a more difficult user experience with moderately sized packages 50-99 functions that could be improved.  I would suggest changing the threshold for creating this alphabetized table of contents to 50 instead of 100.


I've provided info on the current code that specifies this parameter below:

It would appear that all that needs to be changed is the "> 100" parameter on this line:
https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/80a7ca3b605b34d207ed3465c942f39a37e89f6e/src/library/tools/R/install.R#L2770


Or to list the code directly:

In the .writePkgIndices function the line is:
use_alpha <- (nrow(M) > 100)?


It appears to me the only change needed would be to set "nrow(M) > 50".  I believe this very small fix would greatly improve user experience for a growing number of moderately-sized packages whose manual/help pages would still greatly benefit from greater readability/organization.


Thank you!

Sam


--
Samuel E. Marsh, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Laboratory of Dr. Beth Stevens
F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Research Center
Boston Children's Hospital
Harvard Medical School
samuel.marsh using childrens.harvard.edu

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