[R] Documentation General Comments

[Beck, Kenneth (STP)]

Well, I don't think I will live for the rest of my days in a pub, but
thanks to all so far for comments. I actually am willing to help, though
not sure in what capacity. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Rolf Turner [mailto:r.turner at auckland.ac.nz] 
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 7:03 PM
To: r-help
Cc: Beck, Kenneth (STP); Dr. Jeff Miller
Subject: Re: [R] Documentation General Comments


The root of the problem is that R is a voluntary/cooperative project and
those who develop and maintain R are (generously) contributing their
time and probably have little-to-no time left over to devote to the
improvement of the documentation.

The generic answer to such a dilemma is that those who see deficiencies
in R or in its documentation should volunteer to remedy or contribute to
the remediation of those deficiencies.  But there is a problem.

Those of us who see deficiencies often (usually?) simply don't
***know***
enough to undertake the remediation.  This is particularly true in
respect of inadequacies of documentation.  If we knew enough to improve
the documentation we probably wouldn't have been motivated to whinge
about the deficiency in the first place.

An ``obvious'' solution to this dilemma is that us bunnies should
privately seek tutelage from gurus who do know enough and then when we
have properly understood the issues, pass on our learning by re-writing
the documentation.
This is a good theory, but doesn't really work in practice.  The gurus
are usually too busy to provide tutelage --- it would probably be less
time consuming for them to write the documentation themselves.  More
problematic still is that if you ask a guru for more explanation the
guru will, more often than not, get very grumpy and tell you to stop
wasting their time.  After all, the situation is very clear to *them*.
They understand the existing documentation perfectly --- why don't you?

This is why the documentation tends to be opaque in the first place.   
The
people who build R are so clever and understand so much that they cannot
put themselves in the shoes of those of us who are not so blessed with
intelligence and erudition.  So they (often) write terse cryptic
instructions which (often) depend on background knowledge that many of
us lack.  That background knowledge can of course be found ***if you
know where to
look***
--- or even if you don't, given that you are prepared to put in
sufficient time and effort searching ***and*** are clever at searching.
It's that last requirement that leaves *me* out in the cold.

So what's the solution?  Short answer --- there probably isn't one.   
My take
on it is ``Give up and go to the pub!'' :-)

		Rolf Turner


On 22/04/2008, at 10:36 AM, Dr. Jeff Miller wrote:

> I agree completely.  Maybe it's time for an exhaustive manual (with 
> weekly downloadable updates, of course).
>
> It would also be nice if it were cross-referenced. For example, to get

> what I wanted last weekend from a simple 2x2 contingency analysis, I 
> had to bounce between 4 different libraries. (All I was trying to do 
> was replicate the output from SAS Proc Freq).
>
> A lot of the library documentations have a See Also section but these 
> may be getting out of date.
>
> But maybe our request is too monumental to be feasible. (?)
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r- 
> project.org] On Behalf Of Beck, Kenneth (STP)
> Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 5:56 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Documentation General Comments
>
> I realize the R developers are probably overwhelmed and have little 
> time for this, but the documentation really needs some serious 
> reorganizaton.
> A good through description of basic variable types would help a lot, 
> e.g.
> the difference between lists, arrays, matrices and frames. And, it 
> appears there is some object-orientation to R, but it is not complete.

> I can't, for instance find a "metafile" method for a "recordedplot" 
> type, using either the variable direclty or the replayPlot() method. I

> am sorry to post this, but I am really having trouble sorting out 
> certain methods in "R".
> The basic
> tutorial "Introduction to R" is so basic, it hardly helps at all, then

> digging through documentation is really an exercise in frustration.
> The
> SimpleR is also so basic it is of little help other than to just get 
> started. I occasionally find answers in the mailing list. See my later

> post on recordPlot for a good example.
>
> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>
> 11:27 AM
>
>
>
> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>
> 11:27 AM
>
> ______________________________________________
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting- 
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