[R] MS Excel Data

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 08/12/2007 1:15 PM, diegol wrote:
> 
> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> Why not read the 'R Data Import/Export' manual?  It ships with R, or can 
>> be accessed from http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html .
>>
> 
> Dear Professor,
> 
> I'd like to make a suggestion. 
> 
> When I first read some articles ands posts about R's wonderful capabilities,
> the first thing I tried to do is import some data to which I had fitted
> distributions in Excel, so I could compare the results with R. However,
> after reading "R Data Import/Export" and some other references (including
> the relevant parts of "Introduction to R"), I still found importing
> excruciatingly difficult and frustrating, and I believe that to be true for
> many people first approaching R. After a long while I did find the way
> around it; however, some time later I came across the R Commander package
> and GUI, which makes these simple tasks really simple.
> 
> My point is that such unexpected difficulties might deter beginners from
> ever considering R again. I believe that including a reference to the R
> Commander package in the "R Data Import/Export" document could be a step
> forward in this respect. Once the user becomes more familiar with R, they
> can spend some more time to learn programmed solutions to data importing.

Why not write one?  The source to that manual is available at 
https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/doc/manual/R-data.texi (in texinfo 
format).  If  you don't know how to handle the format, don't worry:  for 
a small change, you can just treat it like plain text.

If you email me a suggested patch I'll see about updating the manual.

Duncan Murdoch