[R] Great R documentation

[Michael Dewey]

At 10:09 31/07/2006, hadley wickham wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>I'm trying to improve the documentation I provide my R packages, and
>to that end I'd like to find out what you think is great R
>documentation.  I'm particularly interested in function documentation,

Hadley, I do not think any bit of function documentation, if you mean 
the manual page type documents, is ever that enlightening unless you 
already know what the function does. For me the useful documents are 
the more extended narrative documents.

What I find helpful is:
start with what is the aim of this document
tell me what I am assumed to know first (and ideally tell me where to 
look if I do not)
start with an example using the defaults
tell me what the output means in terms of the scientific problem
tell me what action I might take when it gives me a warning (if that 
is predictable)
tell me about other packages with the same aim and why I should use this one
tell me where to go for more information

>but great vignettes, websites or book are also of interest.
>
>What is your favourite bit of R documentation, and why?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Hadley
>
>

Michael Dewey
http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk