On 08/12/2007 1:15 PM, diegol wrote: > > Prof Brian Ripley wrote: >> Why not read the 'R Data Import/Export' manual? It ships with R, or can >> be accessed from http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html . >> > > Dear Professor, > > I'd like to make a suggestion. > > When I first read some articles ands posts about R's wonderful capabilities, > the first thing I tried to do is import some data to which I had fitted > distributions in Excel, so I could compare the results with R. However, > after reading "R Data Import/Export" and some other references (including > the relevant parts of "Introduction to R"), I still found importing > excruciatingly difficult and frustrating, and I believe that to be true for > many people first approaching R. After a long while I did find the way > around it; however, some time later I came across the R Commander package > and GUI, which makes these simple tasks really simple. > > My point is that such unexpected difficulties might deter beginners from > ever considering R again. I believe that including a reference to the R > Commander package in the "R Data Import/Export" document could be a step > forward in this respect. Once the user becomes more familiar with R, they > can spend some more time to learn programmed solutions to data importing.
Why not write one? The source to that manual is available at https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/doc/manual/R-data.texi (in texinfo format). If you don't know how to handle the format, don't worry: for a small change, you can just treat it like plain text. If you email me a suggested patch I'll see about updating the manual. Duncan Murdoch ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
