Again thanks Chuck but I doubt any newbie who has heard about R and wants to read some of the rather good documentation available is going to use that. What I am trying to point out is that the R site is not the most easilly navigated for a newbie.
Think of it like visiting your local bank's website to report an phishing attack and having to drill down 2-3 pages to find the first hint of "Security". IIRC I used to find the route to "Publications related to R" and lose it again about 3 times a week when I first started to try and use R. On Thu, 6/19/08, Charles C. Berry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Charles C. Berry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [R] R web site-Useability & finding varous bits of documentation > To: "John Kane" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: "R R-help" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Received: Thursday, June 19, 2008, 12:47 PM > On Thu, 19 Jun 2008, Charles C. Berry wrote: > > > On Thu, 19 Jun 2008, John Kane wrote: > > > >> I was starting to write a note to a prospective > R-user and came to the > >> point of explaining how to get useful > introductory information on R. > >> > >> After mentioning the Into and the FAQs I went on > to try to explain how to > >> use a lot of the contributed information. > >> > >> However I realised that there seems to be no > direct way to get to Other > >> Publications or Contributed Documenation. > >> > >> The best I have seen is to get to Books and then > click on "other > >> publications" which take one to > "Publications related to R" or go to > >> "other" (main page) and then click on > "Contributed Documentation" > >> which takes one to "Contributed > Documentation" This seems less than > >> optimal. > >> > >> Am I missing some more direct ways to get to > "Publications related to R" > >> and "Contributed Documentation"? I > remember blundering around the site > >> for some time (days in elapsed time?) before I > managed to find these > >> documents. > > > > Look at the page source for > > > > http://www.r-project.org/navbar.html > > > > or > > > > http://cran.r-project.org/navbar.html > > > > and you will see the href URLs. > > > > Or if you use Firefox, right click on the link, select > 'copy link location', > > and paste the result into your explanation or paste it > into your location > > window and then bookmark it. > > Better still, use an R-centric solution: > > > cran.url <- "http://cran.r-project.org/"; > > cran.navbar <- readLines( url( paste( cran.url, > "navbar.html" , sep="" ) ) ) > > contrib.link <- > sub(".*href=\"([^\"]+)\".*", > "\\1", > grep("Contributed",cran.navbar,value=TRUE) ) > > contrib.url <- paste( cran.url, contrib.link , > sep="" ) > > contrib.url > [1] > "http://cran.us.r-project.org/other-docs.html"; > > contrib.source <- readLines( url( contrib.url ) ) > > and so on. > > :-) > > Chuck > > > > > HTH, > > > > Chuck > > > > > > > > > >> > >> If I am not we may be losing a lot of potential > users who just cannot > >> find basic documentation. The Intro and the FAQs > are invaluable but not > >> exactly the best way for a complete noivice to > get started. > >> > >> ______________________________________________ > >> 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. > >> > > > > Charles C. Berry (858) > 534-2098 > > Dept of > Family/Preventive > > Medicine > > E mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] UC San Diego > > http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/ La Jolla, > San Diego 92093-0901 > > > > ______________________________________________ > > 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. > > > > Charles C. Berry (858) 534-2098 > Dept of > Family/Preventive Medicine > E mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] UC San Diego > http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/ La Jolla, San > Diego 92093-0901 __________________________________________________________________ [[elided Yahoo spam]] ______________________________________________ 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.
