[R] Problems in Recommending R

[Barry Rowlingson]

2009/2/3 Neil Shephard <nshephard at gmail.com>:

> Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a
> very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of
> the most popular text-editors.  I am of course referring to the suite of GNU
> utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution
> and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ).

 What?!? Surely the most widely-used suite of software is Microsoft
Windows, and that has a full-on bells, whistles, activeX,
silverlight-powered web site. I'd say there was a direct relationship
between website glossiness and amount of usage - more people use
Notepad than Emacs. In which direction the causality (if any) works is
an interesting question...

> I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information
> prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists).

 The open-source community should encourage contributions from beyond
the world of the coder -- graphic designers, translators, writers and
so on. Careful contributions from non-coders greatly enhance a
project.

 Certainly style should not triumph over content but help to express
the nature of the content. The R website still has a certain y2k feel
about it, and although I'm sure we'd agree it would be wrong to make
it all web 2.0 with rounded corners and a tag cloud, there's nothing
wrong with refreshing a brand every five or six years.

[
I did try redesigning the R logo for a cleaner look a few years ago -
here it is on different backgrounds with a semi-ironic 3.0 flash:
http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~rowlings/Graphics/Logo/R/logos.png
]

Barry