[R] packaging standards for rda files?

[Paul Johnson]

Dear everybody:

We used the fine foreign library to bring in an SPSS dataset that was 
about 9 megabytes and I can squeeze it into a much smaller R object 
using compression with

save(ndat, file="NatAnnES2000.rda", compress=T). 

I can use load() to get the "ndat" dataframe back, that's all good as 
far as I can see.  If I put that file in the data subdirectory, then the 
data() command finds it and I can load it. 

Seems fine, but then I started wondering if there is not some more 
sophisticated way of packaging these things. For example, how do people 
put in the meta information that appears in the right side of the data() 
output, as in:

Data sets in package '.':

NatAnnES2000     

Data sets in package 'base':

Formaldehyde            Determination of Formaldehyde
HairEyeColor            Hair and Eye Color of Statistics Students
...

Are there other attributes that I should specify if I want to package an 
.rda file for other users?

An rda file created in this way will translate across platforms, won't it?

pj

-- 
Paul E. Johnson                       email: pauljohn at ku.edu
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn
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