[R] Problems in Recommending R

[John Kane]

--- On Tue, 2/3/09, hadley wickham <h.wickham at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: hadley wickham <h.wickham at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
> To: "Neil Shephard" <nshephard at gmail.com>
> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
> Received: Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 9:20 AM
> > 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/ ).
> >
> > I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present
> key information
> > prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing
> lists).
> 
> Have you ever used the R website?
> 
> To download the latest version for R for windows you have
> to:
> 
>  1. avoid clicking on the "R version 2.8.1" link
> - that takes you to a
> directory listing of strangely named files
> 
>  2. recognise that you need to click on an CRAN (what is a
> cran?)
> 
>  3. successfully select a mirror that is up-to-date (with
> no
> information about which mirrors are up-to-date)
> 
>  4. click Windows (ok, this one is easy)
> 
>  5. guess that base is the "distribution" that
> you want
> 
>  6. phew, you're there (but don't follow the advice
> to download from a
> mirror near you or you'll be back at step 3)
> 
> And then if you want to email the url of that page to
> someone else you
> have to jump through hoops because it's embedded in a
> frame.
> 
> Hadley

This sounds simple enough :)  Somewhere I have a set of instructions for some naive new users on how to find documents about R. They were surprisingly difficult to write.