[R] R's documentation

[Patrick Burns]

Zheng, Xin (NIH) [C] wrote:
> Sometimes I get confused with R's documentation. It seems the
> documents is not maintained and updated well. Anyone has similar
> feeling? I don't mean to offend anyone. I hope R would get better and
> better. But documentation is really one very important factor which
> could attract people coming or drive people away.
> 

I absolutely agree.

This is an area where novices as well
as seasoned R users can give to the R
project.

If you find some documentation that is
confusing, then you can write a message
about it that states:

1) Precisely what you find confusing.

2) (optional but very helpful) A
proposed rewrite of the passage that
you think fixes the problem.


Once you attempt step 2 a few times, you
may come to appreciate the difficulty of
writing good documentation.

Help files are a particularly difficult
medium -- they need to be clear (to novices,
not just to the person who wrote the function),
and they need to be short enough that people
might read them.


Patrick Burns
patrick at burns-stat.com
+44 (0)20 8525 0696
http://www.burns-stat.com
(home of "The R Inferno" and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")


> Xin Zheng
> 
> 
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> 
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