[R] a proposal regarding documentation
Philippe Grosjean
phgrosjean at sciviews.org
Mon Jun 15 13:36:45 CEST 2009
Sorry, after a second request, I got the ==Rwiki file not found!==
again. Obviously, I have to solve this bug first!
PhG
Philippe Grosjean wrote:
> John Sorkin wrote:
>> R 2.8.1, Firefox 3.0.11, windows XP Philippe,
>> I suspect there are more substantial problems with the link to the WIKI
>> then you thought. When I tried your code I got a page that contained
>> nothing more than (excluding the nice graphic header and the index on
>> the left-hand page):
>>
>> Trace: » barplot
>> == Rwiki file not found! ==
>>
>> There is a helpful discussion of adding labels to barplots here:
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2002-October/025879.html
>>
>> This WIKI page is not at all useful,it does not as you suggested it
>> does not contain the help page of ?barplot in wiki format as you
>> suggested int would!
>> John
>
> Still the problem with the cache. I refreshed the page, and now it
> appears as it should.
> Best,
>
> PhG
>
>>
>> John David Sorkin M.D., Ph.D.
>> Chief, Biostatistics and Informatics
>> University of Maryland School of Medicine Division of Gerontology
>> Baltimore VA Medical Center
>> 10 North Greene Street
>> GRECC (BT/18/GR)
>> Baltimore, MD 21201-1524
>> (Phone) 410-605-7119
>> (Fax) 410-605-7913 (Please call phone number above prior to faxing)
>>
>>>>> Philippe Grosjean <phgrosjean at sciviews.org> 6/15/2009 4:42 AM >>>
>> Ironically, this function is present since the beginning, although a
>> little buggy. If you try this in R on a computer that is connected to
>> the Internet:
>>
>> wikihelp <- function(topic)
>> browseURL(paste("http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/rhelp.php?id=",
>> topic, sep = ""))
>> wikihelp("barplot")
>>
>> You got the help page of ?barplot in wiki format (with a few
>> presentation bugs, but everything is there, basically)... plus a Wiki
>> discussion section where people can add more material, links, etc.
>>
>> The help page is not physically contained in the wiki page, but it is a
>>
>> file stored elsewhere on the R Wiki server, and that is supposed to be
>>
>> updated regularly (but it is not the case for the moment). In the wiki
>>
>> page you see, there is only a ~~RDOC~~ marker indicating where to
>> include the help page.
>>
>> I have a problem with the R Wiki cache: until someone adds comments to
>>
>> such a page, the content is not refreshed, but you just see ~~RDOC~~.
>>
>> Try, for instance:
>>
>> wikihelp("chisq.test")
>>
>> If the engine thinks 'topic' is ambiguous, it displays a list of
>> possibilities (i.e., our wikihelp() function is somehow a mix of help()
>>
>> and of apropos()). For instance:
>>
>> wikihelp("help")
>>
>>
>> This should not be ambiguous, but it is considered as it currently by
>> rhelp.php (a minor bug probably easy to correct).
>>
>> Finally, all wiki pages are spelled with lowercase. It is the same for
>>
>> help pages. So,
>>
>> wikihelp("RSiteSearch")
>> wikihelp("rsitesearch")
>>
>> lead to the same rdoc:utils:rsitesearch wiki page. I have no solutions
>>
>> for that!
>>
>> So, to conclude, most of the required mechanism is already installed on
>>
>> R Wiki. It just needs a little bit of debugging and fine-tuning to
>> become completely operational. A little help here would be very
>> appreciated!
>>
>> ... and, of course, a refined version of the wikihelp() function must
>> be made widely available to "reveal" this function. One could even
>> consider to write a pager that displays local help page and warns if
>> there are comments on this topic posted on the wiki... or that link to
>> a personal
>>
>> wiki engine where everybody could add its own comments to the help
>> pages, with full-text search ability!
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Philippe Grosjean
>>
>> ..............................................<°}))><........
>> ) ) ) ) )
>> ( ( ( ( ( Prof. Philippe Grosjean
>> ) ) ) ) )
>> ( ( ( ( ( Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
>> ) ) ) ) ) Mons-Hainaut University, Belgium
>> ( ( ( ( (
>> ..............................................................
>>
>> Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>> In PHP and also in MySQL the manual has a wiki capability
>>> so that users can add notes at the end of each page, e.g.
>>>
>>> http://www.php.net/manual/en/functions.variable-functions.php
>>> http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/update.html
>>> That would combine documentation and wiki into one. Here it would
>>> involve copying the R help pages into the wiki in a readonly mode
>> with the
>>> writeable wiki portion at the end of each such page. It would also
>> be
>>> necessary to be able to update the help pages in the wiki when new
>> versions
>>> became available.
>>>
>>> No explicit email group or coordination would be needed. It would
>> also address
>>> the organization problem as they could be organized as they are now,
>> i.e. into
>>> packages: base, stats, utils, ...
>>>
>>> It would require the development of a program to initially copy the
>> help pages
>>> and to update them while keeping the notes in place whenever a new
>> version
>>> of R came out.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 5:35 PM, Peter
>>> Flom<peterflomconsulting at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>> I certainly don't have anything against the WIKI, but I think that
>> the documentation
>>>> is where the action is, especially for newbies. It's the natural
>> first step
>>>> when you want to learn about a function or when you get an error
>> message you
>>>> don't understand.
>>>>
>>>> Peter
>>>>
>>>> Peter L. Flom, PhD
>>>> Statistical Consultant
>>>> www DOT peterflomconsulting DOT com
>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> 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.
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
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