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

[Charilaos Skiadas]

On Feb 6, 2008, at 6:23 AM, 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.

That would make sense, and brings up the other point, that the  
package directory is nontrivial to find as well. I'm thinking here of  
someone who has not used R yet, but is considering it. One approach  
those people would take, it seems to me, is to go to the main page  
and look around at the links to see if there is any information that  
would help them decide if R is right for what they want it. They have  
not heard of packages, and have no idea that a lot of the  
functionality is in the packages.

So they would look on the list on the left looking for something that  
"clicks", and none of the items there would. If they eventually  
decide to click on the CRAN link,  they are now faced with a long  
list of mirrors, and no further explanation of what is behind that.  
If they have seen mirror systems elsewhere, they would immediately  
come to the conclusion that this page will simply lead to downloading  
the software, and dismiss it as not useful.


Just reading Gavin's reply, and he makes a good point about the  
difficulties related to the CRAN master. But couldn't we simply have  
the links to packages from the task views send someone through the  
mirror list? I would imagine something like that should be doable.

Or we could simply have the "Task Views" link on the main page send  
you to a mirrors list, with perhaps a one-line explanation on the top  
of why this part is necessary. But at least at that point the user  
has selected "Task Views" and is more certain that they are on the  
right track. Even better, this step could be even one step deeper,  
after the user has selected which task view they want to see.

> Neil

Haris Skiadas
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Hanover College