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R Documentation(s)

3 messages · Emmanuel Paradis, Friedrich Leisch, Brian Ripley

Emmanuel Paradis
# 
Dear all,

Many thanks for the replies to my yesterday's message. I'm still waiting
for more opinions to try to synthesize the major ideas. Surprisingly to me,
there are few reactions from the R Development Core Team. Brian Ripley
pointed out that an R language manual is in progress.
list, MathSoft has some downloadable docs on its Web server; they can be
found at:

http://www.splus.mathsoft.com/splus/splssupport/library.htm

Best wishes to all,

Emmanuel Paradis
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Friedrich Leisch
# 
EP> Dear all,
EP> Many thanks for the replies to my yesterday's message. I'm still waiting
EP> for more opinions to try to synthesize the major ideas. Surprisingly to me,
EP> there are few reactions from the R Development Core Team. 

Sorry ... 

Any help with documentation is greatly appreciated. As I'm no native
English speaker I also fully understand the need for docs in other
languages (and my students would surely love it).

I would be glad to create a ``contributed documentation'' section on
CRAN which could be used to share such efforts. I can also make a
``devel'' section in it such that it is possible to submit material
that is not regarded as finished (e.g., because some chapters are
missing). 

Another possibility (especially for earlier stages) is to drop me an
email of web sites I should add to the ``links'' section on CRAN. 

Best,
Fritz

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Brian Ripley
#
On Wed, 3 May 2000, Emmanuel Paradis wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
We've been writing software _and_ doing our day jobs (at least, I have:
writing a data editor for Windows needs a lot of concentration, but is
99% done for 1.1.x).

We (R-core) do need to keep thinking about documentation.  As Bill Venables
pointed out here, documnentation is hard wortk (and our two joint books
certainly were), and it should not be surprising that we (Bill and I)
prefer to do this commercially (and a Japanese translation of MASS is
apparently a couple of months off).  Not that is all we do: we are both
major contributors to the R documentation.

The trouble is, there are so many different target audiences. S-notes
(which became R notes and R-intro) was written by Bill for statistics
majors.  For me it did too little statistics, and I wrote some
complementary notes.  The two became MASS after a lot of added value from
two minds and approaches.  Neither of us teach introductory statistics, and
we need people who do to prepare suitable material.  Doug Bates has
pointed out one approach, to give an R slant on a standard text.

I suspect it is time again to point out that R is a collaborative project.
R-core are uniquely well placed to think about internal stategic issues
(like memory managers) and to write the definitive reference material, but
generically we are not especially well placed to write beginner's
documentation.  Indeed, most other experiences (S for one) shows that 3rd
parties often have an advantage there.  So my (and I think our)  
dream/hope is that the users will write what they see the need of.  We
(at least I) would be happy to cast an eye over, comment, amend, ....
(Again, Bill and I have benefited from lots of expert/student readers
over the years, and some S books show the lack of this.)

Brian Ripley