I doubt if anyone will take you up on this request. Only R Core members
can change those manuals, and it's hard work to write clear and correct
documentation. This probably won't make it high enough on their lists
of priorities to actually be addressed.
What you could do is try to write it yourself. Find some helpers who
really know the details (not necessarily R Core members) to review your
proposal. Once you have it written and everyone agrees it is correct,
either publish it as a blog entry somewhere, or submit it to R Core for
inclusion in the manual. I don't recommend posting early drafts to this
mailing list, though you could post near-final ones here: you're only
going to get a few comments before people lose interest.
This would be a lot of work for you. Besides the work of writing
clearly and correctly, you need to learn the material. But that's a big
benefit for you if you are really interested in working with this kind
of thing.
Duncan Murdoch
On 13/12/2023 4:19 a.m., Iago Giné Vázquez wrote:
Dear all,
This is a request to get language objects more documented in the R Language Definition
document (CRAN version<https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-lang.html>,
ETHZ R-devel version<https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/doc/manual/R-lang.html>).
Section '2.1.3 Language objects' claims
There are three types of objects that constitute the R language. They are
calls, expressions, and names.
But then there is only a subsection '2.1.3.1 Symbol objects' which, if I do not
understand wrongly, correspond to names subtype of language objects. It would
be great if calls and expressions subtypes were specified with more detail as
well. And also calls subtype 'formula'.
I came to here since when looking help for formula, it documents the stats function
formula -Model Formula-, and it just says that it produces an object of class
'"formula"' [...] and that a formula object has an associated environment
[...]. Maybe this, and saying that the mode of a formula is a call it is enough to
describe a formula?
Same section 2.1.3 also claims
They can be [...] converted to and from lists by the as.list and as.call
functions
It could be added also a description of how these lists should be (structured,
their components, names, etc.) for the different language objects, that is, for
names, expressions, calls, formulas and so on.
Thank you.
Best wishes,
Iago
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