[R-sig-Geo] SpatioTemporal CRAN task view

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 7:06 AM, Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no> wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2013, ping yang wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> The spatio-temporal tasks are spectacular! Can they bundled in a library or
>> in one package?
>
> install.packages("ctv")

It would help if the one-liner for ctv in the big list of R packages
was a bit more explanatory:

ctv       CRAN Task Views

and its not clear that the functions in that package actually install
the packages referenced in the Task View (rather than install the
"Task View" itself, ie the document).

help.search("task view")

gives the one-liner for ctv::install.views which just says "CRAN Task
Views: Client-side Tools". Which doesn't say "get packages mentioned
in a Task View" or similar.

I still think "task view" is a bad name, and these things need
integrating into R documentation in a much better way. They can be
perfect sources for domain- and problem-specific newcomers to R, yet
are unfindable from the R home page because they are on CRAN which
waves its little independence flag at the R home page (I exaggerate
slightly!). There should be a link to the task views on the R home
page, under documentation, which should be at least the second thing
on the sidebar...

Oh I'm going off on a rant about the R web site now. I'll go take a cold shower.

CC'd to Achim as maintainter of ctv for comment. Migrate to R-dev if needed.


Barry