[R-pkg-devel] ω, α, η, ² in .Rd files

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 10/02/2017 5:28 PM, Jonathon Love wrote:
> hi duncan,
>
>
> On 11/2/17 01:44, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 10/02/2017 8:52 AM, Jonathon Love wrote:
>>> hi uwe,
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/2/17 23:40, Uwe Ligges wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 10.02.2017 03:19, Jonathon Love wrote:
>>>>> hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> i'm trying to include some greek characters in my package
>>>>> documentation,
>>>>> but am having difficulty getting it to work on windows. it works
>>>>> find on
>>>>> macOS, linux, but throws errors on windows:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://win-builder.r-project.org/guwReC6lhQaU/00check.log
>>>>>
>>>>> so far i have tried:
>>>>>
>>>>> ω
>>>>> \u03C9
>>>>> \omega
>>>>> \eqn{\omega}
>>>>> \symbol{"03C9}
>>>>> \enc{ω}{omega}
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The latter is right in principle, but two issues:
>>>>
>>>> 1- you use it in an .R file which should no assume a special encoding.
>>>> I do not use roxygen2, hence don't know how it can work at all, I'd
>>>> simply do it in the Rd file directly.
>>>>
>>>> 2- Thge LaTeX version on winbuilder cannot deal with an UTF-8 omega
>>>> symbol. Hence I'd rather write
>>>> \eqn{\omega}{omega}
>>>> or to square it:
>>>> \eqn{\omega^2}{omega^2}
>>>
>>> thanks for explaining this
>>>
>>> unfortunately this doesn't work with the html or plain-text help (i
>>> assume it does work with the PDF manuals). in the html/plain text help,
>>> it always puts the plain ascii 'omega', rather than the actual symbol.
>>>
>>> so it's seeming like it's not possible to have special chars in the html
>>> or plain-text help, without upsetting the winbuilder?
>>>
>>> if i have to use the plain ascii 'omega', 'eta', 'alpha', it won't be
>>> the end of the world.
>>>
>>
>> I suspect you are making things harder for yourself by using Roxygen2.
>> As Uwe and the manual say, .R files need to be plain ASCII to be
>> portable.  You can include Unicode escapes in strings.
>
> yup, although if the encoding of the comments in the .R files are
> completely misunderstood by system, it shouldn't make any difference to
> the resultant package. Or is there a way that it could interfere?

Roxygen2 will take the comments and write out .Rd files.  Those files 
need to be written in ASCII, or the declared encoding of the package, 
not of the locale where Roxygen2 was run.  (R and CRAN know nothing 
about Roxygen2, they just look at the Rd files as though they were 
written by you.)

So I think it should be possible for all of this to work:  If you write 
your comments in UTF-8 and declare that as the encoding of the package, 
then Roxygen2 should read the .R files as UTF-8 files, and write out 
UTF-8 Rd files, regardless of the locale.  But encodings of strings go 
through several translations internally in R, so there may be some step 
there that loses the original intent.  And Roxygen2 may be just ignoring 
encodings, which would almost certainly go badly.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> of course, the CRAN checks are unlikely to appreciate this subtlety, so
> i guess i'm on the hook there.
>
>> Perhaps Roxygen2 has some way to process Unicode escapes in comments;
>> you'll have to ask its authors.  If you include raw UTF-8 characters
>> in the comments, they'll be processed differently in UTF-8 locales
>> versus others.  So you might get away with doing this if Roxygen2
>> always runs in a UTF-8 locale, but on Windows you will see problems.
>
> yup, i'd reached these conclusions - but always helpful to have someone
> else spell things out.
>
> with thanks
>
> jonathon
>
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