[Rd] Can DESCRIPTION Maintainer: field contain general URL instead of only email address?

[Kasper Daniel Hansen]

Why don't you just give a company email address? Remember this email  
address is to contact the maintainer. Contacting the maintainer is not  
only done in order to request support, it could be a copy right issue,  
code re-use request etc - although I do agree that most emails are  
probably support requests.

Kasper

On Oct 3, 2008, at 11:01 , William Dunlap wrote:

> Our firm would like to route support requests through
> a website instead of using email.  However R will refuse
> to install a package if DESCRIPTION's Maintainer field
> does not have a valid email adress or the special value
> "ORPHANED".  (The check is done with
> tools:::.valid_maintainer_field_regexp.)
>
> I imagine a typical Maintainer line for the package "foo"
> might be something like
>   Maintainer: Amalgamated Widget's Support Team
> <http://support.amalgamatedwidgets.com/spackage?name=foo>
>
> How much does the package system (or CRAN) depend on
> the Maintainer field being an email address?  I can imagine
> programs would find mailing to an address easier than
> dealing with a website, but humans would have a better experience
> with a well designed website.  Perhaps we could add an optional
> %s field to the website so a program could post a small message.
>
> Bill Dunlap
> TIBCO Spotfire Inc.
> wdunlap tibco.com
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel