[R-pkg-devel] UseR! Session: Making R easier to use (was: Navigating the jungle of R packages)

On 2017-02-11 7:39 AM, J C Nash wrote:

Certainly Google can be useful, but it can also be infuriatingly
time-wasting when one needs to sort out related tools that do slightly
different things. Then good, up-to-date task views are important, and
wrappers such as I and some others are trying to develop can be a way
to ease the chore of applying the tools or changing between related
ones where there isn't enough information on which is best.

Perhaps Jim, Spencer, and I (others welcome!) can come up with some
small examples to show where Google / sos / other search tools and the
task views (Julia?) can be illustrated to provide guidance. After all,
the purpose of the UseR! session is to try to develop improved ways to
access R's packages.

       The sos vignette discusses searching for "Petal.Length" and
"spline", combining different searches, and writing the result to an
Excel workbook with sheets for a package summary, the individual help
pages found, and documentation of the actual search.


       With luck, this session may catalyze the formation of a committee
with a vision for how to improve what we have and the commitment to do it.


       Spencer


p.s.  Someone complained that R was not a jungle.  I'm therefore
proposing we consider changing the name of the session to something like
"Making R easier to use".  John Nash thought the jungle analogy was
good, because CRAN and a jungle are both resource rich but navigation poor.

Cheers, John Nash

On 2017-02-10 05:26 PM, Jim Lemon wrote:

This discussion started me thinking about searching for a function or
package, as many questions on the R help list indicate the that poster
couldn't find (or hasn't searched for) what they want. I don't think I
have ever used task views. If I haven't got a clue where to look for
something, I use Google. I can't recall an occasion when I didn't get
an answer, even if it was that what I wanted didn't exist. Perhaps we
should ask why Google is so good at answering uninformed questions, in
particular about R. I'm not the only person on the help list who
advises the clueless to try Google.

Jim


On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 3:51 AM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote:

  I definitely read the task views and advise others to do so.  I
don't know how representative my little corner of the world is,
though.

  I have an embryonic task view on mixed models at

https://github.com/bbolker/mixedmodels-misc/blob/master/MixedModels.ctv

but the perfect is the enemy of the good ...

       What do you think about converting the Task Views into a wiki?


       The Wikimedia rules do pretty well in inviting anyone to
contribute material, quickly and easily deleting obvious vandalism,
managing conflicts, and ensuring that the resulting articles are
noteworthy and high quality -- and no one person has to be responsible
for any specific thing.


       Spencer Graves

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 9:56 AM, J C Nash <profjcnash at gmail.com>

wrote:

We'd be more than happy to have you contribute directly. The goal
is not
just an
information session, but to get some movement to ways to make the
package
collection(s)
easier to use effectively. Note to selves: "effectively" is
important -- we
could make
things easy by only recommending a few packages.

Best, JN


On 2017-02-10 09:29 AM, Michael Dewey wrote:

Dear all

That seems an interesting session. I am the maintainer of one of
the CRAN
Task Views (MetaAnalysis) and will attend
unless I am successful in the draw for Wimbledon tickets.

Just in case I strike lucky one question I would have raised from the
floor if I were there would have been "Does anyone
read the Task Views?". Since I started mine I have received only a
couple
of suggestions for additions including a very
abrupt one about a package which had been included for months but
whose
author clearly did not read before writing. So I
would ask whether we need to focus much energy on the Task Views.

So, maybe see you there, maybe not.


On 16/01/2017 14:57, ProfJCNash wrote:

Navigating the Jungle of R Packages

The R ecosystem has many packages in various collections,
especially CRAN, Bioconductor, and GitHub. While this
richness of choice speaks to the popularity and
importance of R, the large number of contributed packages
makes it difficult for users to find appropriate tools for
their work.

A session on this subject has been approved for UseR! in
Brussels. The tentative structure is three short
introductory presentations, followed by discussion or
planning work to improve the tools available to help
users find the best R package and function for their needs.

The currently proposed topics are

- wrapper packages that allow diverse tools that perform
  similar functions to be accessed by unified calls

- collaborative mechanisms to create and update Task Views

- search and sort tools to find packages.

At the time of writing we have tentative presenters for
the topics, but welcome others. We hope these presentations
at useR! 2017 will be part of a larger discussion that will
contribute to an increased team effort after the conference
to improve the the support for R users in these areas.


John Nash, Julia Silge, Spencer Graves