[R] R-help Digest, Vol 72, Issue 3

[Charles Geyer]

> Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 12:56:15 +0100
> From: friedrich.leisch at stat.uni-muenchen.de
> Subject: Re: [R] Problems in Recommending R
> To: thomas.petzoldt at tu-dresden.de
> Cc: "r-help at r-project.org" <r-help at r-project.org>,
> 	useR-2009 at r-project.org,	paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz
> Message-ID: <18822.57183.637787.426445 at lxh5.stat.uni-muenchen.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> >>>>> On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:44:21 +0100,
> >>>>> Thomas Petzoldt (TP) wrote:
> 
>   > Hi,
>   > you are probably right, though I must say that I like *spartanic and 
>   > efficient* homepages and I don't think that the example given by the 
>   > first mail is a good prototype for the R homepage. But, yes, occasional 
>   > face lifting may be adequate.  Anti-aliasing is of course simple, but 
>   > that's probably not the point. (And I know that there are graphics 
>   > experts with a masters in psychology between us.)
> 
>   > So, why not a new Homepage Graphics Competition 2009? There is still 
>   > some time until useR!2009 in Rennes:
> 
>   > http://www2.agrocampus-ouest.fr/math/useR-2009/
> 
> Perhaps we should extend that to a competition for the complete design
> of the homepage?
> 
> We often get emails like the first in this thread that R could do with
> an update on homepage design (I fully agree) ... but actually nobody
> volunteers to do it. Hence, we still have what I did when the
> worldwide number of R users was probably less than 1000.
> 
> For technical reasons there are some conditions: the homepage is
> maintained via SVN like the R sources, so all should be plain HTML, no
> content management system etc.

For my course web pages I am now using the Perl Template Toolkit
(http://template-toolkit.org/).  This allows all the benefits of a CMS
with with none of the overhead.  On one of my web pages, such as
http://www.stat.umn.edu/geyer/5101/, all of the fritterware (headers,
navigation, contents, footers) is added by PTT.  The source is clean,
and everything is as consistent as if done by a CMS.

The process is this.

   * edit the PTT source, which contains only HTML interspersed with
     PPT commands for "include navigation here" and so forth.

   * bin/build in the top level directory

   * static HTML+CSS web pages are produced for the server.

Think of PTT as sort of an Sweave for web pages.

Yes, there is no handholding, but R and handholding?  Are you serious?

Since I assume the R pages wouldn't look at all like my class web pages,
I wouldn't presume to get into details yet.  But I would gladly provide
the source tree for any of my course web sites as an example for anyone
who wants to try the PTT.

> Ad frames: the main reason that I used them in the first place is to
> have the menus etc in only one file, no need for updating several
> files when a link changes. Today I would probably use iframes, but any
> other soultion is fine, too.

The best solution is NO FRAMES.  Let the PTT organize the pages.

> Another plus would be if we could use the same design for CRAN, and
> that means no server-trickery like server-side includes etc (because
> we do not control the server setup of the mirrors).

No problem.  I use basically the same design for all my class web pages.
Just copy the PTT macro definitions and edit slightly.

> 
> Best,
> Fritz
> 
> -- 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch 
> 
> Institut f?r Statistik                          Tel: (+49 89) 2180 3165
> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t                  Fax: (+49 89) 2180 5308
> Ludwigstra?e 33
> D-80539 M?nchen                     http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>    Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 
>           M?nchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R