[Rd] Viewing pdfs from inst/doc

[rudjer]

Writing R extensions says:  

In addition to the help files in Rd format, R packages allow the inclusion
of documents in arbitrary other formats. The standard location for these is
subdirectory inst/doc of a source package, the contents will be copied to
subdirectory doc when the package is installed. Pointers from package help
indices to the installed documents are automatically created. Documents in
inst/doc can be in arbitrary format, however we strongly recommend to
provide them in PDF format, such that users on all platforms can easily read
them.

My question is easily How?  The function vignette() provides a convenient
way to read properly Sweaved 
vignettes, but what about plain old pdfs that someone like me would like to
stick into inst/doc and
then view?  It seems possible to make a modified vignette function to do
this using print.vignette,
but having started down this road, I got the strong sensation of reinventing
the wheel and the
inevitably related sensation that I wasn't going to know what to call my new
wheel when it was
created.  I recognize that the current setup is supposed to encourage proper
vignettes, but sometimes
courage fails.

A related questions is whether there is a convenient substitute for a
package specific function like this:
FAQ <- function (pkg = "quantreg") 
  file.show(file.path(system.file(package = pkg), "FAQ"))

to read the faq that I've written for the package and placed in the inst/
directory.

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Re: [Rd] Viewing pdfs from inst/doc

[rudjer]

Thanks Romain and Barry for help with this.  I've written a faux.vignette
function somewhat  along the lines of Romain's suggestion.  


Roger Koenker
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Re: [Rd] Non-GPL packages for R

[rudjer]

Comrades,

When talk turns to the purity of the revolution, and purge of packages then
the guillotine can't be far behind.  We all remember Lenin berating the
"renegade Kautsky" for his "pragmatism," and we know where that led...

So let me put in a good word for pragmatism, and incidentally for saving one
of my 
own packages, SparseM, and perhaps eventually my neck.  Last week Kurt asked
me to look into a SparseM licensing quirk based on an inquiry from the
Fedora
folks.  SparseM is GPL except for one routine cholesky.f written at Oakridge
Lab by E. Ng and B. Peyton.  Our version of the code was redistributed in
the
package PCx which was copywrited by the U. of Chicago, who specified that
commercial users should contact someone at Argonne National Lab.  Since the
beginning we have retained this language in the License file of SparseM,
even
though the code in question was not actually developed as a part of PCx.

I contacted one of the original PCx developers who responded as follows:

The routine you mention was distributed with PCx but not part 
of it as you see from the legalese and not covered by the PCx 
copyright.  I tried to interest the authors of that code 
in legal issues in around 1997 but could not get them 
motivated (frankly I also can't get too interested).

To which I heartily concurred.  If someone who is worried about getting sued
would like to dig into this can of worms, then fine.  But life is too short
for the rest of us.  This is quite a murky business, we shouldn't create 
incentives to make it murkier by covering up relevant language on licensing.
But surely we can also all agree that CRAN has been a fantastic success, and
adding new constraints on its operation is ill-advised.

Roger


url:www.econ.uiuc.edu/~rogerRoger Koenker
emailrkoen...@uiuc.eduDepartment of Economics
vox: 217-333-4558University of Illinois
fax:   217-244-6678Urbana, IL 61801

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