Dear developers, the implementation of S4 generics for existing S3 ones in the base package is concerned to be a threat to quick startup times [1]. But since S4 is promoted, and S3/S4 interoperability a pain when package developing [2], are there efforts to improve the situation? E.g. an S3 free system, etc.
A good thing [2] is the package 'stats4', including some setGeneric calls (e.g. for summary, plot, ...) which I can 'importFrom' to a NAMESPACE. Nevertheless, functions as as.matrix, as. dist, merge, duplicated, and for sure some others, are not available as S4 generics. So my question is: will the base/graphics/... S3 generic definitions for S4 methods be completely implemented in a future R release? (E.g. in base4/stats4,/graphics4/... (by heritage [3]) or combined by a single package such as genericS4) Sorry I couldn't get more information from the devel archive (or find a solution/answer) since the same idea already has been mentioned in 2007 [4]. Thank you for clarifying in advance. Sincerely, Sven [1] http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/An-update-method-for-lists-td912749.html#a912756 [2] my opinion [3] http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/improved-error-message-when-existing-implicit-S4-generic-is-not-imported-td4421688.html#a4436278 [4] http://developer.r-project.org/BDR_S4issues.txt ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
