On Sat, 30 Jul 2011, Rolf Turner wrote:
On 29/07/11 19:57, Martin Maechler wrote: <SNIP>but *also* see the *workaround* for the bug that has been on R's ?pdf help page for years [!!!!] --> search for "q" (including the quotes). Why oh why oh why ... are people always thinkg of bugs in R when they notice something and why oh why oh why do they then "google around" instead of just once carefully read the help pages that we have been writing with much diligence, and have constantly been keeping current ... aarrgghh.... {mentally tearing at my few remaining hairs ..}Might I ***ever so humbly*** suggest that some sort of (brief) cross reference to the note in the pdf help be placed in the help for dev.copy2pdf? It's all very well to say RTFM, but when one is dealing with "clyde" one tends to read TFM for "clyde" and not TFM for "melvin" with which one is not dealing. In this case "melvin" is ``obviously'' (**) related to "clyde" and therefore one might reasonably conjecture that there may be some useful insight into one's problems given in the help for "melvin". But then there might be useful insight available in a lot of places, such as the dark side of the moon. Where does one start if one doesn't really understand WTF is going in the first place? cheers, Rolf Turner (**) NOTHING is ever obvious unless you already know it.
FWIW, scanned ?dev.copy2pdf, searched the R bugzilla and googled for bugs against dev.copy2pdf BEFORE sending the email. Looking at ?pdf or using ZapfDingbats as a search term was not the first thing that came to mind.
We do all appreciate the diligence and effort that have gone into writing the help pages but a link in dev.copy2pdf would certainly have helped.
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