[R] Tutorial docs: Vignettes! {was "searching R-help .."}

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "Olivia" == Olivia Lau <olau at fas.harvard.edu>
>>>>>     on Mon, 22 Sep 2003 20:51:18 -0400 writes:

    Olivia> Hi,
    Olivia> I am working on a package which requires separate documentation
    Olivia> (tutorial documentation, really, with a lot of beautifully
    Olivia> latexed equations), and does not use R-help.  

Ooh, that's a pity.  Many packages nowadays (the first ones were
the Bioconductor packages AFAIK) have tutorial documentation
along with them, you put it into ./inst/doc/  which will be
installed into ./doc/ for the installed package.

Ideally, that's what  **vignette**s are for,
You can have beautiful Latex + (R code + R output + R graphics)
all in your vignette, the "+ ..." part, if you make use of
Sweave.

If you do that,  library(help = <package>)
will end like
Devore6> Further information is available in the following vignettes in
Devore6> directory '/sfs/s/linux/7.3/app/R/R_local/library/Devore6/doc':
Devore6> 
Devore6> Devore6: Using the Devore6 package (source, pdf)
Devore6> Intro: Introduction to the Devore6 package for R (source, pdf)

In my installed CRAN packages, I see the following having Sweave
based vignettes:
 bim
 Devore6
 exactLoglinTest
 hwde
 ipred
 lmtest
 maxstat
 multcomp
 mvtnorm
 SparseM
 spdep
 strucchange

I'd recommend taking one of these (or the Bioconductor ones if
you are using some of them!) as an example to follow.

And many more packages have other *.pdf documents in their installed
./doc/ directories.  However, currently this is not shown
in library(help = <package>)   
--- nor anywhere on CRAN's package-source page (which may be
worth improving ...)

    Olivia>  ..................
    Olivia>  ..................

Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch>	http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/
Seminar fuer Statistik, ETH-Zentrum  LEO C16	Leonhardstr. 27
ETH (Federal Inst. Technology)	8092 Zurich	SWITZERLAND
phone: x-41-1-632-3408		fax: ...-1228			<><