[R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up

[Gabor Grothendieck]

A two level solution might be possible as part of this too.
If you got ?whatever off your disk then it could contain a
link to the corresponding wiki page.  If you didn't have
a connection you would still get what you get now but just
couldn't follow the link.  Whenever a new version of R came
out the wiki would be replicated back to the help screens
so that those with no internet still get some wiki info
albeit as a snapshot as of the last release.

Your idea of an option setting could work along with the above
so that it could be set to go directly to the wiki if you 
had a connection and preferred that.

---
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 18:20:26 -0400 
From: <kjetil at entelnet.bo>
To: Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at myway.com>,Jonathan Baron <baron at psych.upenn.edu> 
Cc: <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>, <feh3k at spamcop.net> 
Subject: Re: [R] mailing list for basic questions - preliminary sum up 

 
 
On 17 Dec 2003 at 12:51, Jonathan Baron wrote:

> On 12/17/03 12:19, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> >
> >
> >In rereading this one idea occurred to me. What if the entire R help
> >system were turned into a wiki? That is,
> >
> >?whatever
> >
> >would take you to the help page, but not on your computer --
> >rather to the same page on the wiki. You would then find the
> >docs as they exist now plus the experiences of other people

Yes, this might be nice, but pls remember that many people in many 
countries still use machines without web connection, or worse, pay 
modem time by minute. Or use laptops on planes.

But it could be nice to be able to write
wiki("lm")
as an alternative to 
help("lm")
and maybe the possibility to use options("help") to associate ?lm
with whichever one likes.

Kjetil Halvorsen

> >with that command all at the same place. You could similarly
> >add your own experience to the page.
> 
> Perhaps a good example is
> http://www.php.net/manual/en/
> 
> But this is a lot of work to set up. I'd rather take small
> steps. I do plan to look into phpbb as an alternative to
> bazookaboard*, but not today, and probably not tomorrow. So if
> things proceed without me, so be it.
> 
> Jon
> 
> *I remember rejecting phpbb once, but I sort of gave myself 30
> minutes to install something, not wanting to spend more time than
> that. Bazookaboard met that test, and nothing else did. But I could
> raise the cutoff.
> 
> -- 
> Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
> Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron R page: 
> http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/
> 
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