R devel - Dec 2003 - Reorganization of packages in the R distribution

After long but intermittent discussion (it was mentioned at DSC99, for
example), we have reorganized the standard packages, with

  base graphics stats utils methods

normally loaded,

  mle splines stepfun tcltk tools

available for loading, and

  ctest eda lqs modreg mva nls ts

as stub packages which ensure back-compatibility.  (These have all been
merged into stats except lqs which rejoins rlm in MASS.)

There are a small number of CRAN packages that attempt to modify system
functions and so will need updating.  (Known examples are in dse:tframe,
gregmisc and mclust and some testing code elsewhere.)

What will happen about datasets is currently under discussion.  These are
split between base and stats for historical reasons, except that all time
series datasets (and ts and its methods) are now in stats.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>There are a small number of CRAN packages that attempt to modify system
>functions and so will need updating.  (Known examples are in dse:tframe,
>gregmisc and mclust and some testing code elsewhere.)
>
Brian

What do you mean by "updating?"  In tframe I modify a few functions
like

     start <- function (x, ...) if (is.Ttframed(x)) start(tframe(x), 
...) else UseMethod("start")

If that can no longer be done then this is a serious fundamental change 
that breaks all my code. I hope that is not what you mean. I'm just 
going away for a week, but will follow up when I return.

Paul

Ok, to take this thread in a slightly different direction.  In my
'gregmisc'
package I redefine the R code 'lowess' function 
by moving the existing 'lowess' to 'lowess.default' and making
'lowess' a
generic. 

Is there a "proper" and "supported" way of accomplishing
this task?

[Please ignore for the moment whether this is appropriate for the lowess
function.  That is a separate discussion.]

-G


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