[R] FAQ 7.x when 7 does not exist. Useability question

[John Kane]

--- Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:

> Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
> > On 8/23/07, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>
> wrote:
> >   
> >> On 8/23/2007 11:28 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> >>     
> >>> On Thu, 23 Aug 2007, John Kane wrote:
> >>>
> >>>       
> >>>> The FAQ Section 7 is a very useful place for
> new users
> >>>> to find out any number of R idiosycracies. 
> However
> >>>> there is no numbering on the FAQ Table of
> Content or
> >>>> on the Sections Tables of Contents.
> >>>>         
> >>> Hmm, doc/FAQ does have a numbered table of
> contents and numbered sections
> >>> and doc/manual/R-FAQ.html does have numbered
> sections and my browser's
> >>> search finds 7.10 straight away.
> >>>       
> >> I think the suggestion is to change the contents
> lists in HTML from <ul>
> >> lists to <ol> lists.  Then one would see
> >>
> >>     1. Introduction
> >>     2. R Basics
> >>     3. R and S
> >>     4. R Web Interfaces
> >>     5. R Add-On Packages
> >>     6. R and Emacs
> >>     7. R Miscellanea
> >>     8. R Programming
> >>     9. R Bugs
> >>    10. Acknowledgments
> >>
> >> instead of
> >>
> >>      * Introduction
> >>      * R Basics
> >>      * R and S
> >>      * R Web Interfaces
> >>      * R Add-On Packages
> >>      * R and Emacs
> >>      * R Miscellanea
> >>      * R Programming
> >>      * R Bugs
> >>      * Acknowledgments
> >>
> >> in a browser, and I agree that would be
> preferable (assuming the
> >> numbering is consistent with what we get in the
> other formats).
> >> However, I don't see how to tell makeinfo --html
> to do this.  Adding
> >> --number-sections isn't enough.
> >>     
> >
> > A simple CSS hack is to have
> >
> > ul{
> >     list-style-type: decimal;
> > }
> >
> > in the style. The result can be seen in
> >
> > http://dsarkar.fhcrc.org/R/RFAQ-1.png
> >
> > A more sophisticated hack is to have something
> like
> >
> > -----------
> > body{
> >     counter-reset: chapter;
> >     counter-reset: section;
> > }
> > h2.chapter {
> >     counter-increment: chapter;
> >     counter-reset: section;
> > }
> >
> > ul {
> >     list-style-type: none;
> > }
> >
> > li:before {
> >     counter-increment: section;
> >     content: counter(chapter) "." counter(section)
> " " ;
> > }
> > ---------
> >
> > which results in
> >
> > http://dsarkar.fhcrc.org/R/RFAQ-2.png
> >
> > The only problem here is that there is no way to
> distinguish between
> > the chapter listing and the section listings (both
> are <ul
> > class="menu">). If that could be made to have a
> different class, the
> > chapter listing could be improved.
> 
> I like the first, simple suggestion best; I'll put
> it into R-devel.  
> (With the slight change to use ul.menu instead
> of just ul, because FAQ 2.7 includes a plain ul
> list.)
> 
> Duncan Murdoch
Thanks Deepayan and Duncan.  

It is not a make or break point in using R but it does
seem to make the FAQ a bit more user-friendly.