[Rd] What about a bib file

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "Vince" == Vincent Carey 525-2265 <stvjc at channing.harvard.edu>
>>>>>     on Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:49:37 -0500 (EST) writes:

    Vince> Romain Francois suggests that a central bibliographic database
    Vince> (possibly in bibtex format) might be useful for reference inclusion
    Vince> in R package man pages.  This has been discussed by a small
    Vince> group, with one proposal presented for a package-specific bibtex database
    Vince> placed in a dedicated package subdirectory.  Man page references would
    Vince> then cite the sources enumerated in the database using their bibtex
    Vince> tags.  This approach could encourage better annotation and should
    Vince> confer greater accuracy on package:literature referencing.

a very good idea!
I've wished more than once that we had something like that in
place...

My intermediate workaround has been the following, e.g., in
package 'cluster', in man/fanny.Rd,  I have
   \seealso{
     \code{\link{agnes}} for background and references;
     ....
   }

and then no \references{.} in the fanny.Rd file;  but this
workaround is not very satisfactory,
and I am looking forward to your proposals.

Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich


    Vince> This does not rule out a central archive that might include all the
    Vince> references cited in base man pages.

    Vince> We are doing some work on harvesting the bibliographic citations
    Vince> in man pages in an R distribution, and converting them to a regular
    Vince> format.  The \references section is free form, so the conversion
    Vince> is not trivial, but progress has been made.

    Vince> The infrastructure required to use this approach to propagate
    Vince> (e.g., bibtex-formatted) bibliographic data into the man pages that
    Vince> cite the sources is not yet available, but we hope to have some
    Vince> prototypes in the next month.

    Vince> [apologies if i mess up the threading on this topic; i did not receive
    Vince> the original e-mail to r-devel]

    Vince> Vince Carey
    Vince> stvjc at channing.harvard.edu