[R] Problems in Recommending R

Wacek Kusnierczyk Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk at idi.ntnu.no
Tue Feb 3 15:09:30 CET 2009


Warren Young wrote:
> Far more serious problems:
>
> - Use of frames.  The usability problems of frames are well known, and
> are justified only in a few special cases.  A content-heavy site like
> r-project.org is not one of them, if only because of the bookmarking
> issue.

the framing problem has been solved with the use of a few css elements
years ago.  using css may simplify the html (to the degree you don't
even need html, it can be plain xml with tags denoting data, not
formatting), and once fixed, make editing of the page much easier
(because you don't need to navigate among that many formatting tags). 
some formatting can also be fixed by designing an xslt template to be
run once when new content is uploaded.  the page can still be static
while cleanly separating the data and the formatting.

>
> - Use of Times as the standard font.  Times was commissioned by a
> newspaper, with a primary goal of reducing paper costs.  Its creators
> succeeded by creating something compact and spindly, and thus
> uncommonly ugly and hard to read considering its popularity.  It is
> marginally justifiable on paper, its design target.  It should never
> be used on computer screens; at least, not until they get to 300 dpi
> or so.  In general, use sans serif fonts on computer screens.  There
> are rare exceptions, like Georgia (designed for PC screens from the
> start) and Courier (heavy slab serifs that come out okay on low-res
> screens).  Look at the default fonts used on every OS, and every
> device with an LCD screen you own: they're all sans serif, aren't
> they?  There's a reason for that...

indeed, though it's not really so grave an issue.  it's easy to override
fonts in your browser, and see the cran/r pages in sf by default.

>
> - HTML tables using the default "3D" chiseled look.  Nothing says
> "1995" better, except maybe blink tags, rainbow colored separator
> bars, and "under construction" graphics.

maybe they do want to say '1995'?  it would claim progress.  by far the
most often explicitly mentioned date in r help is 1988 (for 'the new s
language').

vQ




More information about the R-help mailing list