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

[hadley wickham]

> 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.

I would think that a new user would see the download heading, then
think - I don't want to download a cran (whatever that is) I want to
downloaded R, and then continue to be confused for another 10 minutes
until they ask their colleague down the hall for the sequence of 5
(cran -> mirror -> windows -> base -> R-2.6.1-win32.exe) clicks that
they need to find the installer!

It would be nice to automatically provide a link to the current
version of R for the platform that the user is browsing from (see e.g.
getfirefox.com).  Automatic selection of a mirror would be just as
desirable, although I still maintain it would be better to dump the
mirror system entirely and move to a content delivery network (CDN).

Hadley

-- 
http://had.co.nz/