RE^2: [Rd] New generic functions in "R base" {was `truncate'}
Byron Ellis writes:
I think the proposal was for something along the lines of Perl's CPAN module (or ActiveState's PPM for that matter)---sure, you have to update indices periodically, but whatever. Perhaps some sort HTTP based system for performing full text queries (since the database for that sort of thing will undoubtably be large) would be in order, but the spirit of the idea is certainly a good one---especially for new users (students, etc) who don't know the system like the back of their hand. 'sides, kids these days aren't used to things like manpages and apropos. ;-)
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Sorry for entering this a bit late. The CRAN maintainers have actually decided implementing something along the above lines a long time ago. Unfortunately, it simply has not happened thus far. In a way, this would be a good project for a computer science student ... In a nutshell, I see two approaches. One amounts to having a web front end for help.search() which Brian kindly pointed out. I.e., CRAN would have a prebuilt help db for all packages it provides, and a search mechanism patterned after help.search() [you do not necessarily need an R process for the search]. Full-text search fanatics might prefer us to simply `install' all HTML files of the CRAN packages to some place and provide full-text indexing and searching of that. [To those who haven't read from me about this: full-text index/search alone does not solve the problem. You want fuzzy matching a la glimpse along with that, otherwise e.g. spelling differences cannot be resolved.] As we hope that R 1.3.0 will support multiple package repositories, the question *where* to search will become more delicated. For example, the packages by Jim Lindsey are not distributed via CRAN ... If there are any volunteers for implementing this, pls let us know. -k -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._