[R] Getting help on the new features of 2.1.0

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Already we have seen several questioners confused by the new features of 
2.1.0.  Resources which may help:

- Read the R-admin manual.  It has changed a lot, and covers setting up 
locales and languages as well as changes to the configure options. 
Everyone should read chapter 6 (Internationalization), and all those 
building from source on Unix should read Appendices A and B.

- The R-data manual has examples of reading files in different encodings.
Users of UTF-8 locales (MacOS X and most modern Linuxen) will need to
take care with `legacy' files.

- The long list of new topics in the NEWS file: in almost all cases there 
are further details on the help pages.

- For package maintainers, `Writing R Extensions' of course.

There will (I am told) be some expository articles in the 2005-1 issue 
of R-News.  I've put one on the changes to update.packages() and friends 
up (temporarily) at http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/R/Packages210.pdf


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595