The hidden costs of GPL software?

Patrick Burns wrote:

[....]
No, I'm not volunteering to build the system.

Too bad! ;-)

Indeed, the idea to index tens of thousands of functions could not be
appealing to many of us! Why not to consider to test such ideas at the
package level? I mean, building a system that points out the packages of
interest (those in CRAN, of course), given a search phrase would be a more
resonable work. Then, looking at online help of that particular package
would be the small additional effort required by the user. The problem here
is with heterogeneous packages (the XXXXmisc, and the like)...

This mail archive works well if the questions are well posed and answered:

help.search.archive<-function(string){
   RURL="http://www.google.com/u/newcastlemaths"
   RSearchURL=paste(RURL,"?q=",string,sep='')
   browseURL(RSearchURL)
   return(invisible(0))
 }
help.search.google<-function(string){
   RURL="http://www.google.com/search"
   RSearchURL=paste(RURL,"?sitesearch=r-project.org&q=",string,sep='')
   browseURL(RSearchURL)
   return(invisible(0))
 }

help.search.archive('volatility') # may soon show Dr. Harrell's example
help.search.google('volatility') # may show enough

Is there package data that is not searchable through the google search?

Dave

Dave Forrest
 drf at vims.edu                                    (804)684-7900w
 drf5n at maplepark.com                             (804)642-0662h
                                   http://maplepark.com/~drf5n/