[Rd] RFC: allow packages to advertise vignettes on Windows

[Seth Falcon]

Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org> writes:

> On May 15, 2007, at 1:57 PM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 14 May 2007, Seth Falcon wrote:
>>
>>> Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> writes:
>>>> I'm interested in making vignettes more visible.  Putting them on
>>>> the
>>>> menu is not the only way, but since you're offering to do the
>>>> work, I
>>>> think it's a good idea :-).
>>>
>>> Excellent :-)
>>>
>>>> A few questions:
>>>>
>>>>  - Should packages need to take any action to register their
>>>> vignettes, or should this happen automatically for anything that the
>>>> vignette() function would recognize as a vignette?
>>
>> I do think this should be optional, and preferably an option that
>> people have to opt in for.

Just to make sure we are on the same page: you are advocating for an
option that would be used by package developers to opt-in for their
vignette to be registered.

>> Some sort of vignette browser that packages can register with would
>> in my view be better, and that could have a single menu entry.
>> Menus can easily get swamped.
>>
>
> I agree entirely.
>
> What puzzles me: why do we need yet another way to register
> vignettes? What is wrong with vignette()?

Vignettes are a great form of documentation for new users.  These
users are more likely to be most comfortable in the GUI environment
and providing access to the vignettes via the GUI(s) seems like it
adds a lot of value.

I don't disagree with the assessment that a menu list isn't the worlds
best vignette browser interface.  But this approach has been
reasonably successful for the Bioconductor project to make things
easier for our Windows users.  Perhaps most importantly, we have code
that would require little modification to allow package authors to
register vignettes in a Vignettes menu on Windows.  I think this would
be an improvement over what is available now.

It would be great if this discussion generates interest in a more
robust solution; my offer of help may be limited to polishing what
we've been using in BioC.

Cheers,

+ seth

-- 
Seth Falcon | Computational Biology | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
http://bioconductor.org