[Rd] Finding code (was: [R] A request)

E.L. Willighagen egonw@sci.kun.nl
Tue, 2 Apr 2002 10:38:07 +0200


On Tuesday 02 April 2002 10:05, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> "E.L. Willighagen" wrote:
> > On Tuesday 02 April 2002 09:27, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> > > Indrajit SenGupta wrote:
> > > > Can we expect to see an R package on Statistical Quality Control in
> > > > the future like SPLUS? I can't understand why nobody made this
> > > > package before.
> > >
> > > Nice to hear you would like to contribute!
> > > Thank you!
> >
> > Rather often, I get the feeling that the developer are feeling
> > underappreciated? Don't.
>
> After first thoughts about ignoring your message: No, I don't feel
> underappreciated. 

<snip>

> R provides the tools for easily documenting and packaging functions.

Interesting point, because I am working on a library with the same issues:
how to make stuff easy to find... R offers keywords, aliases and full-text 
search. But that is all, right? 

And these only work for installed packages (i.e. those within the search 
path...) And (just tested), full-text search does not include searching 
references or descriptions, right (i.e. \description{} and \reference{})? 

For example,
> help.search("Dongarra")
No help files found with alias or title matching `Dongarra'

Dongarra is author from article in svd().

Did I miss some crucial functionality of help() and help.search()? Why can 
only keywords and aliasses be searched?

To return to Indrajit's question: there must be several other packages with 
which one can do statistical quality control, or at least with some minor 
extensions... But he seems not be able to find them. Ofcourse, that could be
imcompetence, but even then... should R be only used by experts, and not
by novice? In other words, is there a reason why R does not have more 
extensive search methods that can be used by novice to get to know R in such 
depth that the do not have to bug the R-help@ mailling list?

Egon



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