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

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 28/02/2010 9:08 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> By Index page I was referring to the page you get when you click Index
> at the bottom of any HTML help file.  After clicking Index you get an
> HTML page that gives a clickable list of help pages for that package.
> You don`t get the description of the package, the name and contact
> info to the maintainer, or a link to such info.  For the
> helloJavaWorld package this is what you get (where I have added a star
> after each link):
> 
> Hello Java World
> Documentation for package ‘helloJavaWorld’ version 0.0-6
> User Guides and Package Vignettes
> 
> Read overview* or browse directory*.
> 
> Help Pages
> 
> helloJavaWorld*	Function to say hello from a Java class

That looks like 2.10.x or earlier.  In R-devel (to be 2.11.0) you get:

Documentation for package ‘helloJavaWorld’ version 0.0-7

     * DESCRIPTION file.
     * Overview of user guides and package vignettes; browse directory.

Help Pages
helloJavaWorld 	Function to say hello from a Java class

The only addition for that particular package is the link to the 
DESCRIPTION file, which contains most of the additional information 
that's on the CRAN page.  Other pages will also show links to demos and 
package NEWS.