2009/2/3 Neil Shephard <nsheph...@gmail.com>: > Again I'd disagree, perhaps the most widely used suite of software has a > very simple and clean web-site with few bells and whistles, ditto for one of > the most popular text-editors. I am of course referring to the suite of GNU > utilities (http://www.gnu.org/) that make a working GNU/Linux distribution > and Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ ).
What?!? Surely the most widely-used suite of software is Microsoft Windows, and that has a full-on bells, whistles, activeX, silverlight-powered web site. I'd say there was a direct relationship between website glossiness and amount of usage - more people use Notepad than Emacs. In which direction the causality (if any) works is an interesting question... > I like the R web-site, its clean and simple, present key information > prominently (manuals, docs, CRAN, RNew and mailing lists). The open-source community should encourage contributions from beyond the world of the coder -- graphic designers, translators, writers and so on. Careful contributions from non-coders greatly enhance a project. Certainly style should not triumph over content but help to express the nature of the content. The R website still has a certain y2k feel about it, and although I'm sure we'd agree it would be wrong to make it all web 2.0 with rounded corners and a tag cloud, there's nothing wrong with refreshing a brand every five or six years. [ I did try redesigning the R logo for a cleaner look a few years ago - here it is on different backgrounds with a semi-ironic 3.0 flash: http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~rowlings/Graphics/Logo/R/logos.png ] Barry ______________________________________________ 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.
