00Index of data - R-devel | R Mailing Lists

Brian Ripley · 2000-04-10T14:31:49Z

> Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 10:25:41 -0400 > From: Paul Gilbert > To: Prof Brian Ripley > CC: r-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch > Subject: Re: [Rd] 00Index of data > > >the help page for the data. > > Now that's something I didn't know about but is probably documented > somewhere that I missed. (No wonder I found the index rather > restrictive.) I now see it is reported as missing documentation by R CMD > build. (It is buried by all the other warni

Brian Ripley

Mon, Apr 10, 2000 7:31 AM #

When you solve all the others it will emerge more clearly :)

Yes, and `Writing R Extensions' tells you about making help files for data.
And the base system has them. (So does S-PLUS!)

Readers are supposed to know to look for help on R *objects* (not
just functions).  Even the help.start intro says `Functions & Datasets'

It does not get built, and help for data goes in INDEX. (That is
one reason why some of us prefer hand-crafted INDEX files.)
We are moving towards a way to distinguish the object type in a help file,
but are not there yet.

Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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Kurt Hornik

Tue, Apr 11, 2000 11:24 PM #

:-)

Correction: R CMD build will try to build/update the documentation index
(`INDEX') as well as the data index (`data/00Index').  The latter, as I
think Paul expected, happens by taking the names of all Rd files that
contain the keyword `datasets' (which again shows how important it is to
eliminate all warnings about Rd files without keywords etc).

The problem is that package developers might register more (or less)
information in their INDEX than obtained via this procedure.  E.g., if
an Rd file documents more than one object, the alias mechanism ensures
that documentation for all objects is found, but it is not smart enough
to ensure that all objects documented get a corresponding index entry.

The solution would be to introduce something like

	\index{NAME}{DESCRIPTION}

lines in the Rd files, and in fact have the index built from these lines
exclusively rather than the names.  But first we must know what `NAME'
exactly should be here, e.g. whether we only want to list *OBJECTS* in
the index or *ALL* topics being documented.

-k
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