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

[John Kane]

--- hadley wickham <h.wickham at gmail.com> wrote:

> > 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!

I think it took me longer but I found it without the
help of a colleague since they were all SPSS or (gasp)
Excel users

It is rather confusing.
> 
> 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/
> 
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