[R-pkg-devel] CRAN student assistants

[John Mount]

Dialogue is not always getting what you demand in one step.  One form dialogue with CRAN is re-submitting with CRAN-correspondence stating what one wants.

Also, for a lot of applications being able to turn off messages is critical.

> Sorry first sentence should read
> 
> I agree that `message()` is ideally preferred, precisely because
> of the reasons Martin stated, it is easily controlled by the user.
> 
> On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 9:41 AM Jim Hester <james.f.hester using gmail.com <https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel>> wrote:
> >
> > I agree that `message()` is in an ideally preferred, precisely because
> > of the reasons Martin stated, it is easily controlled by the user.
> >
> > Unfortunately, in the real world, the windows R gui console and
> > RStudio (which copied behavior) color messages, and anything on stderr
> > in fact, in red, which confuses most users who are trained to treat
> > messages in red as errors.
> >
> > This also makes using colored output (where available) more
> > challenging when using `message()`.  You either have to accept the
> > text as red, or unconditionally change the text color to black or
> > similar, which can then be unreadable if the user is using a dark
> > color theme.
> >
> > Jenny is an experienced package developer. She knew this tradeoff and
> > the use of `cat()` in gargle was deliberate choice in an imperfect
> > world. She did not make this decision out of ignorance of a better
> > way.
> >
> > However there is no way for Jenny or any other package developers to
> > have a dialog during a CRAN submission, the communication is only in
> > one direction, if she resubmits explaining her rationale for the
> > choice she may not even have the same reviewer the next time.
> >
> > Bioconductor seems to have a much better review process for
> > submissions, with real dialog between the reviewer and package author,
> > perhaps CRAN can learn from that process and improve the submission
> > experience in the future.
> >
> > Jim

---------------
John Mount
http://www.win-vector.com/ <http://www.win-vector.com/> 
Our book: Practical Data Science with R https://www.manning.com/books/practical-data-science-with-r-second-edition <http://www.manning.com/zumel/>





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