Pie in the sky suggestion (was: [R] Re - segments within a lattice graph)

[Duncan Murdoch]

On Mon, 6 Jan 2003 12:18:09 +0000 (GMT), you wrote in message
<Pine.LNX.4.31.0301061211310.14876-100000 at gannet.stats>:

>*But* the segments help file is part of base R graphics, and xyplot and
>lsegments are part of the recommended addon package lattice.  To be
>consistent you would want us to document in base R all the places where
>there are limitations of usage with addons (or recommended addons).

Here's a suggestion that would not be at all practical to implement
within the current help system, but something to keep in mind for any
future major revision:    this problem (and many others like it) could
be solved if there were a way for the lsegments help file to ask to be
cross-referenced from the segments help file.  Now we have \seealso,
what we would need would be \referfrom.

This would be relatively easy to do if the help were kept in a
database, and each time it was displayed a new search was done, but
would be really hard with the current system where help pages are
static.

A major benefit of this is that packages often have routines that
don't exactly fall within their nominal scope.  For example, the boot
package has linear programming routines.  If boot could add
cross-references to those routines in appropriate places (e.g. optim),
then more people would know about them.

Duncan Murdoch