[Rd] Wishlist: Vignettes on CRAN

[Kurt Hornik]

>>>>> McGehee, Robert writes:

> I was recently browsing through CRAN's Finance task view to remind
> myself of the publicly available packages relevant to my work. As the
> reference manuals are all online, I am able to flip through the
> available functions to get an idea of the package's scope before
> downloading. 

> That said, many authors have taken the time to additionally provide a
> useful vignette which provides a better overview to complicated
> packages. However, as far as I can tell, the only way to read or even
> know if a package has a vignette is to first download and unpack the
> package source, which is inconvenient when one wants to understand a
> package _before_ installing.

> Perhaps an easy way to make vignettes more accessible to the end user
> would be to link the vignette PDF directly to the download page so
> that one could download it just as one can download the reference
> manual or package source. This both publicizes the vignette (since
> many users may even be unaware that a package has a vignette) and
> facilitates browsing.

Yes, that would be very useful.

Will have a look, but this looks like something for the summer break.

Best
-k