[R] How to search for packages - wrap up!

[Gavin Simpson]

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On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 03:23 -0800, Neil Shephard wrote:
> 
> 
> Charilaos Skiadas-3 wrote:
> > 
> > On Feb 5, 2008, at 10:37 AM, Monica Pisica wrote:
> > 
> > But perhaps I am missing something very obvious?
> > 
> > 
> 
> I thought the task views were located where they are (linked from the page
> that lists packages) as they summarise the available packages for the given
> topic.
> 
> Neil

Originally, that might have been the thinking behind locating the link
on CRAN and not the R homepage. Another reason might have been to keep
the number of menu options on the R homepage to a manageable number.

A new user will come to the R homepage, go to CRAN via the link under
download and from there see Packages and then be swamped by the huge
number available. Having Task Views as a link on the R homepage would
make these more visible.

However, getting this working so that users don't swamp the CRAN master
will be interesting. The Task Views themselves could be on r-project.org
but looking at the packages linked from the Task Views should be done on
one of the CRAN mirrors and how that is arranged could be more hassle
than it is worth, just to give Task Views higher visibility on R
homepage.

G
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