On 7.1.2010 20:22, Duncan Murdoch wrote: > A more useful example than ls() would be methods(). I think it > would be nice to have a list of methods included in the man page for > a generic function, and links to their pages if they have their own > man pages. You might want to list all installed methods, with some > sort of highlighting to indicate which ones are already attached, or > perhaps be able to toggle between installed and attached, or > whatever. None of that is possible with static help, not even a list > of installed methods, because someone might install a new package > that offers some others after the static help has already been built. > I see. Well, I never lacked any of these capabilities... Please understand that people who use R to do their work may have different objectives than the developers - and they form the majority of R users.
> On 07/01/2010 2:16 PM, Kevin Wright wrote: >> Well, among other things, if my global environment becomes >> cluttered/corrupt/etc and I quit R, then restart R, the links in my >> browser are now dead. > You weren't following Dieter's instructions, then. Indeed, but that option is not documented, as far as I know - at least not in 2.10.0. And even if it was, most users would not be able to find it or use it because they have no clue what a port is. >> I have to close all the tabs and call help to open them again. >> Also, the R-supplied java tool for searching help is ancient and >> underwhelming. > Then contribute a new one. Duncan, if even the quite advanced and computer-proficient users have trouble using the dynamic R help and have to resort to some quite complex and cumbersome home-made solutions to get back the basic functionality then something is not right. It's true that the help system was never a particular strength of R and that it needed an overhaul. What worked well in the late 90's with a few dozen packages does not work well with >1000 packages. However, 2.10.x does not seem to make things better. The work of the R developers should be widely appreciated and we really do appreciate it. The question is whether their effort is extended in the best direction... (Imho, that's an issue with most open-source projects and it's been much worse with Mozilla than with R). Just my 2c. Michal -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Michal Kulich, PhD Dept. of Probability and Statistics Charles University Sokolovska 83 186 75 Praha 8 Czech Republic Email: kul...@karlin.mff.cuni.cz ______________________________________________ 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.
