[Rd] why is \alias{anRpackage} not mandatory?

[Thomas Petzoldt]

Dear Hadley,

thank you very much for your comments.

hadley wickham wrote:
>>> - there are lots of packages without one, so this would create a lot of
>>> work for people to add them.
>> No, I don't think that this is too much work. Positively speaking, it's one
>> small contribution to bring more light into the exponentially growing
>> haystack.
> 
> It may not be much work for you, but I find any additional
> requirements to the package format to be a real pain.  I have ~10
> packages on CRAN and having to go through and add this extra
> information all at once is a big hassle.  R releases tend to happen in
> the middle of the US academic semester when I have a lot of other
> things on my plate.

O.K., but the discussion with Duncan shows:

- the required information is already available (in DESCRIPTION),
- one can think about ways to generate the page automatically for 
existing packages,
- the intro can be short and should link to other pages or PDFs,
- one should avoid doubling and inconsistency.

> Additionally, I find that rdoc is the wrong format for lengthy
> explanation and exposition - a pdf is much better - and I think that
> the packages already have a abstract: the description field in
> DESCRIPTION.  

o.k., but abstract may be (technically) in the wrong format and does not 
point to the other relevant parts of the package documentation.

> The main problem with vignettes at the moment is that
> they must be sweave, a format which I don't really like.  I wish I
> could supply my own pdf + R code file produced using whatever tools I
> choose.
>
 > Hadley

I like Sweave, and it is also possible to include your own PDFs and R 
files and then to reference them in anRpackage.Rd.

Thomas P.