[R] Documentation General Comments

Thu Apr 24 16:22:58 CEST 2008

Agree that terseness is good, but I also agree with other posters that
better cross referencing or maybe an index of synonyms would be good. 

So far, the best suggestion is the pdf at this link 

(http://www.medepi.net/epir/epir_chap02.pdf). 

Is there a way to pop at least part of this into the R-base help page?
Are there legal or copyright issues? If I had known this from the start,
it would have been much better. A good analogy is that old cartoon of
the blind guys trying to figure out what an elephant is. The guys
feeling at the front get a much different impression than the guys
poking at the back side. I felt like that using R data structures,  had
to blindly poke around trying different things, 90% of which did not
work, yeilding only error messages, but now knowing the underlying
organisation it is going much more smoothly. Ideally this kind of basic
info would be in the core R docuemtation, you should not have to search
this hard to get it!

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On Behalf Of Bert Gunter
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 10:29 AM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Documentation General Comments

FWIW:

I consider the documentation of Core R to be one of its great strengths:
it is terse (read: to the point), detailed, and accurate. I find it
eminently useful and helpful. Indeed, it was why I made the decision
some years ago to switch from S-Plus to R (I readily acknowledge that
S-Plus may have improved its docs since then -- haven't looked at it in
years). While I understand that it may not suit everyone -- learning
styles differ, after all -- may I at least say that there is one user
out here who is appreciative of the hard work and care that has gone
into the documentation. Far FAR better than anything I could do!

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On Behalf Of Greg Snow
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 8:16 AM
To: Beck, Kenneth (STP); r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Documentation General Comments

This is a case of you can't please everyone.  A while back there was
some complaint that "Introduction to R" spent to much time on talking
about the different types of variables, just the opposite complaint of
yours.

There are several other sources of documentation (look under the books
link on the R homepage or the contributed documentation link on any CRAN
site, also browse through the newsletter).  For more in depth
information on variable types and object oriented programming in R you
may want to invest in a copy of "S Programming" by Venables and Ripley.

If you have specific questions (about data types, or other) then tell us
what you have read and what you still do not understand and you are more
likely to get a useful answer.  (also read the posting guide that is
referenced at the bottom of almost all posts to the list).

--
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
(801) 408-8111

> -----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 3:56 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.
> 

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