[R] Hadley's book: paper/PDF/etc. versus github

[Hadley Wickham]

> Hi, folks.  I've got a sort of coupon that would allow me to get a
> copy of "Advanced R" by Hadley Wickham at no cost.  OTOH, I've already
> cloned the github repository, and having the "live" Rmd files (or in
> this case, rmd files) is enormously more useful to me than having any
> form of electronic or paper format.

I presume you mean https://github.com/hadley/adv-r (no need to be
secretive about it ;)

> The only reason I can think of for getting, say, a PDF version of the
> book is that corrected versions of such books are sometimes (always?)
> made available for free if you've already got the PDF version of the
> book.  (I know O'Reilly does this.)

The pdf version of the book is made from the files in that repo, so I
don't see any advantage there.  (You can build the pdf yourself if you
spend a few minutes looking for the right file ;)

> But if the github version is going to continue to exist, be updated,
> and be generally available, that's even better.  IS it going to exist,
> be updated, and be generally available?  Any thoughts?

The github version _is_ the authoritative version of the book (and in
some sense it's already slightly better than the book, since a number
of minor typos have been fixed since the book was published). C&H is
mostly print on demand, so later printings of the book are likely to
pick up the improvements, although there is still some additional
human checking in the process, so it'll only get updated every 6
months or so.

The repo and http://adv-r.had.co.nz will continue to exist for the
foreseeable future.

Hadley

-- 
http://had.co.nz/