[R] My remark on libraries

[Ben Bolker]

  This comes up from time to time; at the moment I can't find the thread
in the mailing list archives.  The advantage, obviously, would be to make
all this accumulated code available to the R community.  The disadvantage
would be that such a heap of code would be highly heterogeneous -- some
stuff would work, some wouldn't, some would work originally but obsolesce
-- and the good stuff would get lost anyway.  On the other hand, you're
right that it would be hard to find the functions one wanted in a set of
"miscmisc" packages (but would it be any harder than finding it in a
random heap of contributed code?)  
  I guess I don't have a good answer; I would encourage you to bundle your
stuff up into a little library, even if you don't think it's enough. (I am
equally guilty of laziness: I've written a variety of packages for
landscape generation, genetic stock analysis, 3D graphics, maximum
likelihood ... but while I have put them up on my own web page at
http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker/R, I've never submitted them to CRAN for
most of the reasons you cite.)

http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn/R/statsRus.html
is a good collection of (tiny) bits and pieces, but it depends on a single 
person for updating (and for keeping it coherent ...)
  
  Ben Bolker



On Fri, 7 Feb 2003, Eric Lecoutre wrote:

> 
> Hi R community,
> 
> These days, I am writing some functions to work with 2-ways frequency 
> tables ; you know all this tuff about measures of association: Chisq and 
> derived (phi, cramer's v), tau b, tau c, somer's d and so on.
> 
> So I consider all those functions could be gathered in a single R file, as 
> they are coherent and dealing with the same problem / objective (analysis 
> of crosstables). Nervertheless, I wouldn't say there is here enough stuff 
> to juystify the creation of a library. First, there is here few material, 
> second it is not enough to cover the practical problem; which should be the 
> goal of a library.
> 
> In fact, I have also lot of others splitted files with R code suitable for 
> different purposes. And I could easily imagine I am not the only one among 
> R programmers... And at the end, this is pity that I can't share this code 
> (and BTW that I can't benefit of other's one!)
> 
> I though the solution was to deliver my own (eric)misc library, you know... 
> But then we would rapidly be overcome by all miscmisc from world, and it 
> would be difficult to find specific functions with all that libraries.
> 
> To me, a possible solution would be to have a page on CRAN listing such R 
> files. Then, everyone would be able to upload R files with a short comment 
> (what does the functions do). I am thinking about something less "strict" 
> than libraries: for that, no reason to test the code (programmer's 
> responsability). Then, maybe sometimes there would be enough pieces of code 
> on a statistical subject to justify the creation of a library (still with 
> the mind: a library is a collection of tools designed to help on a precise 
> situation).
> 
> While I'm at it, it would also be nice to have a shared page on 
> screenshots/graphics. For sure, I really enjoy to use R to produce 
> wonderfull graphics. Not only would it be nice sometimes to show them, but 
> it would also be the occasion to demonstrate R possibilities for newcomers 
> (think on color graphics including mathematics). R would never have enough 
> publicity!
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> __________________________________________________
> 
> Eric Lecoutre           Informaticien/Statisticien
> Institut de Statistique                        UCL
> 
>                                (+32) (0)10 47 30 50
>                             lecoutre at stat.ucl.ac.be
>      http://www.stat.ucl.ac.be/ISpersonnel/lecoutre
> __________________________________________________
> Le vrai danger, ce n'est pas quand les ordinateurs
> penseront comme des hommes, c'est quand les hommes
> penseront comme des ordinateurs.     Sydney Harris
> 
> ______________________________________________
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> 

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