[R-pkgs] Updates to rms package

[Frank E Harrell Jr]

The rms package, a replacement for the Design package, has been updated 
on CRAN.  The most major change is the addition of smooth calibration 
curves for externally (val.surv function) or internally (calibrate.cph, 
calibrate.psm) validating a survival model with right-censored data. 
The polspline package is used to estimate the survival probability at a 
fixed time point as a function of the predicted survival probability. 
Some user-requested plotting features have been added to bplot and 
plot.Predict.

Changes in version 2.1-0
    * Made Predict not return invisibly if predictors not specified
    * New option nlines for plot.Predict for getting line plots with 2 
categorical predictors
    * Added rename option to rbind.Predict to handle case where 
predictor name has changed between models
    * Added ties=mean to approx( ) calls that did not have ties= specified
    * Added nlevels argument to bplot to pass to contour
    * Added par argument to iLegend - list to pass to par().
    * Redirected ... argument to iLegend to image( ).
    * Fixed groupkm - was printing warning messages wrongly
    * Added new semiparametric survival prediction calibration curve 
method in val.surv for external validation; this is the first 
implementation of smooth calibration curves for survival probability 
validation with right-censored data
    * Fixed calibrate confidence limits from groupkm
    * Added smooth calibration curve using hare (polspline package) for 
calibrate.cph and calibrate.psm
    * Added display of predicted risks for cph and psm models even for 
the stratified KM method (old default)

-- 
Frank E Harrell Jr   Professor and Chair           School of Medicine
                      Department of Biostatistics   Vanderbilt University