[R] FAQ 7.x when 7 does not exist. Useability question

Duncan Murdoch murdoch at stats.uwo.ca
Thu Aug 23 18:35:18 CEST 2007


On 8/23/2007 11:28 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Aug 2007, John Kane wrote:
> 
>> The FAQ Section 7 is a very useful place for new users
>> to find out any number of R idiosycracies.  However
>> there is no numbering on the FAQ Table of Content or
>> on the Sections Tables of Contents.
> 
> Hmm, doc/FAQ does have a numbered table of contents and numbered sections 
> and doc/manual/R-FAQ.html does have numbered sections and my browser's 
> search finds 7.10 straight away.

I think the suggestion is to change the contents lists in HTML from <ul> 
lists to <ol> lists.  Then one would see

    1. Introduction
    2. R Basics
    3. R and S
    4. R Web Interfaces
    5. R Add-On Packages
    6. R and Emacs
    7. R Miscellanea
    8. R Programming
    9. R Bugs
   10. Acknowledgments

instead of

     * Introduction
     * R Basics
     * R and S
     * R Web Interfaces
     * R Add-On Packages
     * R and Emacs
     * R Miscellanea
     * R Programming
     * R Bugs
     * Acknowledgments

in a browser, and I agree that would be preferable (assuming the 
numbering is consistent with what we get in the other formats). 
However, I don't see how to tell makeinfo --html to do this.  Adding 
--number-sections isn't enough.

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> 
>> An R-help list reply of "Read FAQ 7.10" in response to
>> a question about converting a factor to numeric is  a
>> bit cryptic. The only time 7.10 appears is after the
>> searcher has found the entry.
> 
> It would help if you told us what you are searching that did not contain 
> '7.10'.
> 
>> Would it be a good idea to actually number the entries
>> for the FAQ Table of Contents and the Table of
>> Contents for the Sections?
> 
> I think we do.
>



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