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[R-pkg-devel] Public URLs for help for versions of base packages

16 messages · Jeff Newmiller, Duncan Murdoch, David Hugh-Jones +2 more

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Dear R packagers,

This isn't strictly about packaging but I thought you guys might have the
most relevant expertise. I'm looking for a source of online help for R base
packages, which covers all versions (for some reasonable value of "all").
So e.g. the equivalent of `?lm` for R 4.1.0.
Is there any web page for that? Better still, an "official" source? I have
been using rdocumentation.org but it hasn't updated for a while.

Cheers,
David
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On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 20:22:47 +0100
David Hugh-Jones <davidhughjones at gmail.com> wrote:

            
These live in the R source tree, under src/library:
https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/

For the actual releases of R, you may have to go looking at the
branches inside that repository, e.g., the following command:

svn log \
 https://svn.r-project.org/R/branches/R-4-1-branch/src/library/stats/man/lm.Rd

...should tell you the history of ?lm until the latest R-4.1-patched.

Do the Git mirrors track these release branches? The branching model of
Subversion [*] is different from the Git model, so perhaps not.
#
That?s useful to know. But is there anywhere with preformatted HTML pages?

Cheers, D
On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 at 21:46, Ivan Krylov <krylov.r00t at gmail.com> wrote:

            
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Sure. On your computer. Install the old version of R and let it serve the relevant docs.

Dunno of anyone doing this historical dive online for you though. Why would you want preformatted docs if you didn't have those old versions installed?
On June 29, 2023 4:23:55 PM PDT, David Hugh-Jones <davidhughjones at gmail.com> wrote:

  
    
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R includes the tools::Rd2HTML function to convert Rd source files to 
HTML for display.  RStudio offers previews of Rd pages; presumably they 
use those functions.  I imagine ESS does the same.

If you want to do it yourself, start with ?tools::Rd2HTML.

There have been changes to the specs over time, but I'd guess current R 
could render old Rd pages reasonably well, back to when Prof Ripley and 
I wrote Rd2HTML in R 2.9.0.  Before that, it was done by a Perl script, 
and the Rd syntax had more differences; I think the parser would likely 
die on those very old files.

Duncan Murdoch
On 29/06/2023 8:01 p.m., Jeff Newmiller wrote:
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This is for the rcheology package. I run a Shiny web app which lets you
examine changes to functions across R versions:

https://hughjonesd.shinyapps.io/rcheology/

Manually storing and converting the Rd might be possible, but it would be
burdensome in terms of data (and my time). And if the Rd spec has changed
across versions, that?s another problem.

More generally, shouldn?t there be publicly available versioned
documentation? Python has had this for a long time.

David


On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 at 01:01, Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us>
wrote:
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On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 06:19:33 +0100
David Hugh-Jones <davidhughjones at gmail.com> wrote:

            
CRAN has a searchable archive of R documentation for the whole CRAN at
https://search.r-project.org/, but only for the latest version of
everything. I would expect adding support for the whole history of R
base packages to be burdensome in terms of their time too, even without
considering the history of CRAN package documentation.

I suppose you could apply for a grant from the R Consortium (which
reports revenue similar to that of the Python Software Foundation) in
September or wait until next January or February and propose a Google
Summer of Docs project in order to have it done, but people in general
seem to dislike having to support infrastructure forever from now on for
projects that linearly grow in size.
#
Why store them?  Download the source on demand, and convert it.  Seems 
pretty simple.

Duncan Murdoch
On 30/06/2023 1:19 a.m., David Hugh-Jones wrote:
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On 29/06/2023 4:46 p.m., Ivan Krylov wrote:
The wch/r-source mirror tracks the releases.  It takes svn tags and 
branches and converts them all to git branches.  For example, here's the 
help for Rd2HTML from R 2.9.0:

 
https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/tags/R-2-9-0/src/library/tools/man/Rd2HTML.Rd

Duncan Murdoch
#
Static web pages get indexed by google.

David


On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 at 09:55, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
wrote:

  
  
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On 30/06/2023 7:57 a.m., David Hugh-Jones wrote:
Isn't that an argument against having static pages?  If I do a Google 
search for "R lm" I think it's better to find the current docs rather 
than dozens of obsolete versions.  It's rare that someone wants to see 
changes across versions, so doing that should take extra work.

Duncan Murdoch
#
There are plenty of places to find current docs. I think it?s fine to have
versioned ones also. I agree it would be a good idea to clearly signal
?hey, this is an old version? - indeed I?ve been bitten by that in python
before. I?m working on this now? will see what I can do.

Does anyone happen to know if it?s possible to create 00index files without
installing the relevant package? (Loading R 0.60 is challenging?)

D



On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 at 13:02, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
wrote:
Sent from Gmail Mobile
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OK, so I took Jeff's hint and did this myself!

https://github.com/hughjonesd/r-help

Sample page for ?plot from the first version of R (at least, the first
version that is on svn):

https://hughjonesd.github.io/r-help/0.60/base/plot.html

Not everything is guaranteed to work, so please report bugs if you find any.

Cheers,
David


On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 at 13:23, David Hugh-Jones <davidhughjones at gmail.com>
wrote:

  
  
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Nice! (I like "A longer description will go here eventually.")

  It would be cute/handy to have navigation links available for "go to 
this help page in the next (previous) version of R" (if it's not a huge 
pain)
On 2023-06-30 11:10 a.m., David Hugh-Jones wrote:
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I agree, really nice.

One suggestion would be to check for the existence of the corresponding 
topic link.

For example, 
<https://hughjonesd.github.io/r-help/2.9.0/graphics/plot.html> links to 
<https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/graphics/html/plot.html>, 
which doesn't exist.  The generic is now in the base package, at 
<https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/base/html/plot.html>.

Duncan Murdoch
On 30/06/2023 11:37 a.m., Ben Bolker wrote:
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I think trying to guess where topics have moved will be hard. I'll consider
version links.
David


On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 at 17:04, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
wrote: