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I'd also say the CRAN repository is awful, it discourages collaboration, and is typically written by small groups of academics who write the worst documentation
by sweezyjeezy 11y ago
I'd also say the CRAN repository is awful, it discourages collaboration, and is typically written by small groups of academics who write the worst documentation I have ever seen.
- xixi77 11y agoI blame the R documentation standards. They force a package author to produce a useless alphabetically-listed pdf, and many people just stop at that point. Without any standards at all, people would have at least produced a readme.txt, which would have been a huge improvement -- e.g. I much prefer working with unfamiliar user-written Matlab packages :)
- lottin 11y agoI don't know why so many people complain about R documentation, I think it's pretty good. The PDFs are useless for sure, but you don't have to use that. Emacs displays documentation pages in a split window. Or you can use a web browser. https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/doc/html/packages.html https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/doc/html/packages.html
- xixi77 11y agoFunction docs are fine, but they are not really that helpful in figuring out how to use a new package.
- IndianAstronaut 11y agoIt certainly needs a Pypi like rating or popularity system.
- pvaldes 11y agoIt seems that you are looking for vignettes in fact. Examples of use library('zoo'); vignette('zoo'); ##### library('ggplot2'); vignette(package='ggplot2')
- xixi77 11y agoI am (sort of); but most packages don't have vignettes. Zoo and ggplot2 (and a few other major packages) have great documentation, but they are an exception.