[R] R web site-Useability & finding varous bits of documentation

[John Kane]

Again thanks Chuck but I doubt any newbie who has heard about R and wants to read some of the rather good documentation available is going to use that.  What I am trying to point out is that the R site is not the most easilly navigated for a newbie. 

Think of it like visiting your local bank's website to report an phishing attack and having to drill down 2-3 pages to find the first hint of "Security".  

IIRC I used to find the route to "Publications related to R" and lose it again about 3 times a week when I first started to try and use R.


On Thu, 6/19/08, Charles C. Berry <cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu> wrote:

> From: Charles C. Berry <cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: Re: [R] R web site-Useability & finding varous bits of documentation
> To: "John Kane" <jrkrideau at yahoo.ca>
> Cc: "R R-help" <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
> Received: Thursday, June 19, 2008, 12:47 PM
> On Thu, 19 Jun 2008, Charles C. Berry wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 19 Jun 2008, John Kane wrote:
> >
> >>  I was starting to write a note to a prospective
> R-user and came to the
> >>  point of explaining how to get useful
> introductory information on R.
> >>
> >>  After mentioning the Into and the FAQs I went on
> to try to explain how to
> >>  use a lot of the contributed information.
> >>
> >>  However I realised that there seems to be no
> direct way to get to Other
> >>  Publications or Contributed Documenation.
> >>
> >>  The best I have seen is to get to Books and then
> click on  "other
> >>  publications" which take one to
> "Publications related to R" or go to
> >>  "other" (main page)  and then click on
> "Contributed Documentation"
> >>  which takes one to "Contributed
> Documentation"  This seems less than
> >>  optimal.
> >>
> >>  Am I missing some more direct ways to get to
> "Publications related to R"
> >>  and "Contributed Documentation"?  I
> remember blundering around the site
> >>  for some time (days in elapsed time?) before I
> managed to find these
> >>  documents.
> >
> > Look at the page source for
> >
> > 	http://www.r-project.org/navbar.html
> >
> > or
> >
> > 	http://cran.r-project.org/navbar.html
> >
> > and you will see the href URLs.
> >
> > Or if you use Firefox, right click on the link, select
> 'copy link location', 
> > and paste the result into your explanation or paste it
> into your location 
> > window and then bookmark it.
> 
> Better still, use an R-centric solution:
> 
> > cran.url <- "http://cran.r-project.org/"
> > cran.navbar <- readLines( url( paste( cran.url,
> "navbar.html" , sep="" ) ) )
> > contrib.link <-
> sub(".*href=\"([^\"]+)\".*",
> "\\1",
> grep("Contributed",cran.navbar,value=TRUE) )
> > contrib.url <- paste( cran.url, contrib.link ,
> sep="" )
> > contrib.url
> [1]
> "http://cran.us.r-project.org/other-docs.html"
> > contrib.source <- readLines( url( contrib.url ) )
> 
> and so on.
> 
> :-)
> 
> Chuck
> 
> >
> > HTH,
> >
> > Chuck
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >>  If I am  not we may be losing a lot of potential
> users who just cannot
> >>  find basic documentation.  The Intro and the FAQs
> are invaluable but not
> >>  exactly the best way for a complete noivice to
> get started.
> >>
> >>  ______________________________________________
> >>  R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> >>  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >>  PLEASE do read the posting guide
> >>  http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >>  and provide commented, minimal, self-contained,
> reproducible code.
> >> 
> >
> > Charles C. Berry                            (858)
> 534-2098
> >                                            Dept of
> Family/Preventive 
> > Medicine
> > E mailto:cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu	            UC San Diego
> > http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/  La Jolla,
> San Diego 92093-0901
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained,
> reproducible code.
> >
> 
> Charles C. Berry                            (858) 534-2098
>                                              Dept of
> Family/Preventive Medicine
> E mailto:cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu	            UC San Diego
> http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/  La Jolla, San
> Diego 92093-0901


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