[R] R help question: How can we enable useRs to contribute corrections to help files faster ?

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 28/02/2010 7:19 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> The name of the package is at the top of each help page and then
> library(help = myPackage) would get you the maintainer info.  Or in
> place of the last step googling for CRAN myPackage would get to a page
> like this:
> http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/zoo/index.html
> so it could be done in two steps.
> 
> What would be nice would be if the R help systems HTML help page for
> each command had a link to a local version of the above page for the
> associated package (and perhaps the HTML Index page for the package
> would also link to it).  Then it would just be a matter of bringing up
> the help page and clicking on the package name at the top.

Not all of the information on that page would make sense locally.  Some 
of it is there to help you decide whether to download the package, or to 
actually download it.

The things I see that aren't available in the package index page in R-devel:

  - CRAN checks
  - download links
  - reverse dependencies

Am I missing something?  None of those seem like they'd be sensible locally.

Duncan Murdoch


> 
> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 5:44 AM, Tal Galili <tal.galili at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello dear R users,
>>
>>
>> *Here is the background for my question:*
>>
>> I just had a look at the help file for
>> ? Yeast
>> in the "HistData" package.
>>
>> In it, I found a small spelling mistake where the word "*c*istribution" was
>> written instead (so I imagin) "*d*istribution".
>> I thought maybe I should e-mail the developer. Since there is no link to
>> contacting the developer inside that help page, I went and googled the
>> package name. Found it's place on cran (in the third result), where I found
>> the maintainer to be Michael Friendly <friendly at yorku.ca>  (Whom I am
>> corresponding to this e-mail).
>>
>> So it took me three steps to send a tiny typo: search the package on google,
>> find the maintainer e-mail (where "at" should be changed to "@"), and
>> writing an e-mail.
>> How could this have been faster?
>>
>> *Proposed solutions:*
>>
>> One (simple) way, is for the help page to have the maintainer e-mail present
>> at the bottom of every help page. Where upon clicking the link - an e-mail
>> will popup with the e-mails subject header containing the package and the
>> relevant help page title.
>> Another (more complex, but more scalable) way, is if the help page could
>> have been also present on some wiki. Inside the help page, there would be a
>> link to an "edit" section on the online wikipedia (R-help-epidia)- where I
>> could have just went and fixed the type.
>>
>>  What do you think, and who should I propose this to?
>>
>> Best,
>> Tal
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------Contact
>> Details:-------------------------------------------------------
>> Contact me: Tal.Galili at gmail.com |  972-52-7275845
>> Read me: www.talgalili.com (Hebrew) | www.biostatistics.co.il (Hebrew) |
>> www.r-statistics.com (English)
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> 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.