[R-pkg-devel] Package Anchored Links with R-Dev

2020-08-09 Thread John Mount
With "R Under development (unstable) (2020-07-05 r78784)" (Windows) 
documentation references such as "\link[utils]{dump.frames}" trigger "Non-file 
package-anchored link(s) in documentation object" warnings even if the package 
is in your "Imports."

Is that not the right form? Is there any way to fix this other than the 
workaround of just removing links from the documentation? I kind of don't want 
to do that as the links were there to help the user.

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Re: [R-pkg-devel] Package Anchored Links with R-Dev

2020-08-09 Thread Ben Bolker
This might have to be \link[utils:debugger]{dump.frames} now, i.e.
explicitly linking to the man page on which dump.frames is found
rather than following aliases?

On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 2:01 PM John Mount  wrote:
>
> With "R Under development (unstable) (2020-07-05 r78784)" (Windows) 
> documentation references such as "\link[utils]{dump.frames}" trigger 
> "Non-file package-anchored link(s) in documentation object" warnings even if 
> the package is in your "Imports."
>
> Is that not the right form? Is there any way to fix this other than the 
> workaround of just removing links from the documentation? I kind of don't 
> want to do that as the links were there to help the user.
>
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Re: [R-pkg-devel] Package Anchored Links with R-Dev

2020-08-09 Thread John Mount
Thanks Ben!

I'll see if that style change works for me.

> On Aug 9, 2020, at 11:04 AM, Ben Bolker  wrote:
> 
> This might have to be \link[utils:debugger]{dump.frames} now, i.e.
> explicitly linking to the man page on which dump.frames is found
> rather than following aliases?
> 
> On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 2:01 PM John Mount  wrote:
>> 
>> With "R Under development (unstable) (2020-07-05 r78784)" (Windows) 
>> documentation references such as "\link[utils]{dump.frames}" trigger 
>> "Non-file package-anchored link(s) in documentation object" warnings even if 
>> the package is in your "Imports."
>> 
>> Is that not the right form? Is there any way to fix this other than the 
>> workaround of just removing links from the documentation? I kind of don't 
>> want to do that as the links were there to help the user.
>> 
>> __
>> R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel

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Re: [R-pkg-devel] Package Anchored Links with R-Dev

2020-08-09 Thread Duncan Murdoch

On 09/08/2020 2:04 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:

This might have to be \link[utils:debugger]{dump.frames} now, i.e.
explicitly linking to the man page on which dump.frames is found
rather than following aliases?


It's always had to be that way for reliable links.  It's just that the 
QC checks are finally warning about the unreliability.


Duncan Murdoch



On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 2:01 PM John Mount  wrote:


With "R Under development (unstable) (2020-07-05 r78784)" (Windows) documentation references such as 
"\link[utils]{dump.frames}" trigger "Non-file package-anchored link(s) in documentation object" 
warnings even if the package is in your "Imports."

Is that not the right form? Is there any way to fix this other than the 
workaround of just removing links from the documentation? I kind of don't want 
to do that as the links were there to help the user.

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Re: [R-pkg-devel] Package Anchored Links with R-Dev

2020-08-09 Thread John Mount
Firstly: thanks to Ben for the help/fix.

I know nobody asked, but.

Having to guess where the documentation is just to refer to it is just going to 
be really brittle going forward. Previous: if the function you referred to 
existed in the package you were fine. Future: if don't correctly specify where 
the help is you are wrong. Going forward: reorganizing a package's help can 
break referring packages. This sort of brittleness is going to be a big 
time-waster going forward. It seems like really the wrong direction in 
packaging, isolation, and separation of concerns (SOLID style principles).

> On Aug 9, 2020, at 11:04 AM, Ben Bolker  wrote:
> 
> This might have to be \link[utils:debugger]{dump.frames} now, i.e.
> explicitly linking to the man page on which dump.frames is found
> rather than following aliases?
> 
> On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 2:01 PM John Mount  wrote:
>> 
>> With "R Under development (unstable) (2020-07-05 r78784)" (Windows) 
>> documentation references such as "\link[utils]{dump.frames}" trigger 
>> "Non-file package-anchored link(s) in documentation object" warnings even if 
>> the package is in your "Imports."
>> 
>> Is that not the right form? Is there any way to fix this other than the 
>> workaround of just removing links from the documentation? I kind of don't 
>> want to do that as the links were there to help the user.
>> 
>> __
>> R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel

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Re: [R-pkg-devel] Package Anchored Links with R-Dev

2020-08-09 Thread Duncan Murdoch

On 09/08/2020 2:59 p.m., John Mount wrote:

Firstly: thanks to Ben for the help/fix.

I know nobody asked, but.

Having to guess where the documentation is just to refer to it is just going to 
be really brittle going forward. Previous: if the function you referred to 
existed in the package you were fine.


That's not correct.  The system could often work around the error, but 
not always.


Duncan Murdoch


 Future: if don't correctly specify where the help is you are wrong. 
Going forward: reorganizing a package's help can break referring 
packages. This sort of brittleness is going to be a big time-waster 
going forward. It seems like really the wrong direction in packaging, 
isolation, and separation of concerns (SOLID style principles).



On Aug 9, 2020, at 11:04 AM, Ben Bolker  wrote:

This might have to be \link[utils:debugger]{dump.frames} now, i.e.
explicitly linking to the man page on which dump.frames is found
rather than following aliases?

On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 2:01 PM John Mount  wrote:


With "R Under development (unstable) (2020-07-05 r78784)" (Windows) documentation references such as 
"\link[utils]{dump.frames}" trigger "Non-file package-anchored link(s) in documentation object" 
warnings even if the package is in your "Imports."

Is that not the right form? Is there any way to fix this other than the 
workaround of just removing links from the documentation? I kind of don't want 
to do that as the links were there to help the user.

__
R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list
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Re: [R-pkg-devel] Package Anchored Links with R-Dev

2020-08-09 Thread Ben Bolker



On 8/9/20 3:08 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

On 09/08/2020 2:59 p.m., John Mount wrote:

Firstly: thanks to Ben for the help/fix.

I know nobody asked, but.

Having to guess where the documentation is just to refer to it is 
just going to be really brittle going forward. Previous: if the 
function you referred to existed in the package you were fine.


That's not correct.  The system could often work around the error, but 
not always.


  I may be missing something. It may well be that referring to a 
cross-package link by alias rather than by the name of the Rd page 
actually never worked, but: would there be a big barrier to making 
cross-package documentation links be able to follow aliases? I can 
imagine there may be technical hurdles but it seems like a well-defined 
problem ...





Duncan Murdoch


 Future: if don't correctly specify where the help is you are wrong. 
Going forward: reorganizing a package's help can break referring 
packages. This sort of brittleness is going to be a big time-waster 
going forward. It seems like really the wrong direction in packaging, 
isolation, and separation of concerns (SOLID style principles).



On Aug 9, 2020, at 11:04 AM, Ben Bolker  wrote:

This might have to be \link[utils:debugger]{dump.frames} now, i.e.
explicitly linking to the man page on which dump.frames is found
rather than following aliases?

On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 2:01 PM John Mount  
wrote:


With "R Under development (unstable) (2020-07-05 r78784)" (Windows) 
documentation references such as "\link[utils]{dump.frames}" 
trigger "Non-file package-anchored link(s) in documentation object" 
warnings even if the package is in your "Imports."


Is that not the right form? Is there any way to fix this other than 
the workaround of just removing links from the documentation? I 
kind of don't want to do that as the links were there to help the 
user.


__
R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list
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Re: [R-pkg-devel] Package Anchored Links with R-Dev

2020-08-09 Thread Duncan Murdoch

On 09/08/2020 3:15 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:


On 8/9/20 3:08 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

On 09/08/2020 2:59 p.m., John Mount wrote:

Firstly: thanks to Ben for the help/fix.

I know nobody asked, but.

Having to guess where the documentation is just to refer to it is
just going to be really brittle going forward. Previous: if the
function you referred to existed in the package you were fine.


That's not correct.  The system could often work around the error, but
not always.


    I may be missing something. It may well be that referring to a
cross-package link by alias rather than by the name of the Rd page
actually never worked, but: would there be a big barrier to making
cross-package documentation links be able to follow aliases? I can
imagine there may be technical hurdles but it seems like a well-defined
problem ...


To link to "?utils::dump.frames", you need to construct a URL that leads 
to the HTML file containing that help page on static builds of the help 
system.


If utils is available, no problem, just look up the fact that the page 
you want is debugger.html at the time you construct the link.  But it 
was documented that such links should work even if the target package 
was not available at the time the link was being made.  So you need a 
link that you are sure will be available when the referenced package is 
eventually installed.  Obviously that's going to be brittle.


Perhaps the new requirement that referenced packages be mentioned in the 
DESCRIPTION file is a step towards addressing this.  If everything 
that's referenced is present when the help system is being built, there 
will be an easy solution.


Nowadays, it would probably be reasonable to put in stub pages for every 
alias, so that when you try to load dump.frames.html, the page itself 
redirects you to debugger.html.  Or maybe you could just have a single 
page in each package that handles aliases via Javascript.


Or R could just no longer support static copies of the help system.

When you are using dynamically generated help pages, the link can be 
resolved by the server, and that's why those links have appeared to work 
for so long, even though the requirement to link to the filename instead 
of the alias has been there since before I wrote the dynamic help server.


Duncan Murdoch






Duncan Murdoch


  Future: if don't correctly specify where the help is you are wrong.
Going forward: reorganizing a package's help can break referring
packages. This sort of brittleness is going to be a big time-waster
going forward. It seems like really the wrong direction in packaging,
isolation, and separation of concerns (SOLID style principles).



On Aug 9, 2020, at 11:04 AM, Ben Bolker  wrote:

This might have to be \link[utils:debugger]{dump.frames} now, i.e.
explicitly linking to the man page on which dump.frames is found
rather than following aliases?

On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 2:01 PM John Mount 
wrote:


With "R Under development (unstable) (2020-07-05 r78784)" (Windows)
documentation references such as "\link[utils]{dump.frames}"
trigger "Non-file package-anchored link(s) in documentation object"
warnings even if the package is in your "Imports."

Is that not the right form? Is there any way to fix this other than
the workaround of just removing links from the documentation? I
kind of don't want to do that as the links were there to help the
user.

__
R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list
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