R-alpha: Re^2: data file names

	[R-devel'ers:  spill over from R-core .. -- MM]

"KH" == Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at> writes:

Robert Gentleman writes:

    >> In preparing the next Windows release I want to make opening up
    >> system data files (and their documentation) more transparent. I
    >> would really like to adopt the convention that data files use the
    >> suffix .rdf (.dat seems like it's taken). This will make it easier
    >> to get the builtin Windows file browsers to work on it and save me
    >> some considerable work trying to figure out what is and isn't a data
    >> file.

    KH> What does `rdf' stand for?

R Data File ?

But why can't it just be `.R'  (-> `.r' in the ...OS)?

At least currently, these are simply files with valid  R code.
If they would end in `.R', ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics) would
automatically be put in the proper mode.
Of course, we could also use a new ending,
but I think this would only make sense if the data files would internally
use a different format,
e.g.,  data.dump / data.restore, or one which works with  read.table.

    >> It would also be nice if one of you great documentation folks
    >> thought of a html-like format for the .doc files so that I could
    >> simply pop them up. This would also ideally let index.doc be built
    >> on the fly....

yes

    >> I find it quite frustrating that I can't peek at the doc file while
    >> trying to decide which data file I want.

Hmm; in 0.60 we at least have
	data()
for the list
and
	?foodata
for the doc in foodata.doc.  This does already help me quite a bit..

    >> I'm hoping to get a browser
    >> that will let you peruse the documentation while selecting the file.

    >> Comments/opinions appreciated.

    KH> You are obviously right.  I think what we want is to have a unified
    KH> documentation format for both functions (which is what we have
    KH> until now been focussing on) and variables (``data files'').  In
    KH> the not too long run, will we be able to attach data directories so
    KH> that we can really treat the data files as variable objects?
Do you mean binary data files?  Or would they be `compiled' 
	from src/library/<pkg>/data/
	to   library/<pkg>/data/  ?


    KH> Anyway, I just realized that all .doc files now have the structure

    KH> 	NAME DESCRIPTION FORMAT SOURCE REFERENCES

    KH> so it seems that we only need to add \format{} and \source{} to the
    KH> Rd standard.
yes; this would be one thing; the other being a script (or a person ..)
for translating all current the foodata.doc to foodata.Rd ...
But __YES__ , the earlier, the better  (but ``post release'');
I'd like to have this BEFORE the following is completely solved ..

    KH> And, well, to document the format we really need
    KH> tables.  FL, MM, what is the right way to do these?

As with \itemize , \enumerate and \describe
	(do they work now in HTML,  Fritz? -- would be nice for release ...).
HTML and LaTeX are `obvious'
(we  shouldn't be too fancy, I think, just use a common denominator of
	\begin{tabular}{..} ... \end{tabular}  and <TABLE> ...
        Fritz will have to look at (a newer version of) latex2html once more)
and the real problem is  nroff.
 (yes, I do want to have simple fast online help using C-c C-v in ESS .