R devel - May 2009 - proposed changes to RSiteSearch

Can someone in R Core please take a look at the attached patches to
RSiteSearch() and its help page?  I guess Jon is planning some changes
on his site.  Jon:  could you elaborate on what the patch does?

Best,
Andy


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On 05/07/09 10:05, Liaw, Andy wrote:
> Can someone in R Core please take a look at the attached patches to
> RSiteSearch() and its help page?  I guess Jon is planning some changes
> on his site.  Jon:  could you elaborate on what the patch does?
The idea is simply to remove the mail archives, so the search will be
only of functions' help pages.  Eventually I will also add package
vignettes, but I don't think we need anything special for that.  I
can't imagine that someone would want to search just vignettes and not
help pages, or the reverse.

The reasons are: 1. The mail archives are becoming increasingly
difficult and time consuming for me to maintain.  2. There are now
three other ways of searching mail archives, all of which seem much
better than mine, but there seem to be no other good ways to search
help pages for functions, and, indeed, the new RSiteSearch packages
does only functions.  3. With only functions it would be much easier
for someone to set up a complete mirror of my site, which seems like a
good idea.

Jon
-- 
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron
Editor: Judgment and Decision Making (http://journal.sjdm.org)

From: Liaw, Andy
> 
> Can someone in R Core please take a look at the attached patches to
> RSiteSearch() and its help page?  I guess Jon is planning some changes
> on his site. 
Apparently the attachments were stripped off the first time.  Here's a
second try.  

I've already set "format" to "plain text" in Outlook,
even in that first
post.  If this still doesn't work, can some one explain to me what I
have to do in Outlook to get the attachment through?

Best,
Andy
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From: Liaw, Andy 
> 
> From: Liaw, Andy
> > 
> > Can someone in R Core please take a look at the attached patches to
> > RSiteSearch() and its help page?  I guess Jon is planning 
> some changes
> > on his site. 
> 
> Apparently the attachments were stripped off the first time.  
> Here's a second try.  
> 
> I've already set "format" to "plain text" in
Outlook, even in
> that first post.  If this still doesn't work, can some one 
> explain to me what I have to do in Outlook to get the 
> attachment through?
OK, as suggested by Bill Dunlap and Spencer Graves, I've renamed .diff
to .diff.txt.  Hopefully the third time is charm...

Apologies for the wasted bandwidth.
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If it were an entry on the Rgui menu on Windows then at
least Windows users could get to it quickly regardless of
the name.

2009/6/4 Romain Fran?ois <francoisromain at
free.fr>:
> One other comment was that the function name is a pain to type, which I
> believe is also true for "RSiteSearch". Considering we (I) might
add other
> engines, would it make sense to have a more generic name, ... something
like
> "web.search", "doc.search", ...
>
>
> Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>
>> Having RSiteSearch.function be a strict superset of RSiteSearch might
>> make sense but giving them the same name seems too heavy
>> handed unless done via OO which seems not applicable here since
>> R's version is not generic and the two use the same class,
"character",
>> anyways.
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 5:37 PM, spencerg <spencer.graves at
prodsyse.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hello All:
>>>
>>> ? ?What do you think of adding a function "RSiteSeach" to
the package of
>>> that name, masking the "RSiteSearch" function in
"utils", trapping any
>>> call
>>> RSiteSearch('searchstring', 'function') to the
current
>>> RSiteSearch.function
>>> and passing all others to "utils:::RSiteSearch"? ?This
was suggested by a
>>> referee to a manuscript on this new capability submitted to "R
Journal".
>>> ?The current version of this manuscript is available via
>>> "system.file('doc',
>>> 'RSiteSearch.pdf', package='RSiteSearch')" if
you have the "RSiteSearch"
>>> package installed.
>>>
>>> ? ?Thanks,
>>> ? ?Best Wishes,
>>> ? ?Spencer
>>>
>>>
>>> Liaw, Andy wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> ?I agree! ?Recall, though, I had added the RSiteSearch()
functionality
>>>> to the Rgui under Windows (Help / search.r-project.org...), so
if
>>>> RSiteSearch() is taken out, this need to go, too.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>> From: Jonathan Baron
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> There is something to be said for taking all of these
functions,
>>>>> including the original RSiteSearch, out of utils and
putting them in
>>>>> the new RSiteSearch package. ?These are the sorts of things
that will
>>>>> get revised frequently, and this way (I think) we won't
have to bother
>>>>> whoever takes care of utils, which is part of the regular R
>>>>> distribution.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm adding Spencer Graves to the cc list. ?Maybe he is
interested in
>>>>> doing this.
>>>>>
>>>>> Jon
>>>>>
>>>>> On 05/07/09 20:54, Romain Francois wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We could have a few functions similar to RSiteSearch or
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> gmaneSearch I
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> just posted and then cook a summary html page with R
...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here is a function that grabs relevant groups from
gmane:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> gmaneGroups <- function( prefix =
"gmane.comp.lang.r." ){
>>>>>> ? url <- URLencode( sprintf(
>>>>>> "http://dir.gmane.org/index.php?prefix=%s",
prefix) )
>>>>>> ? txt <- grep( '^<tr.*<td
align=right.*<a', readLines(
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> url ), value >>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> TRUE )
>>>>>> ? ? rx <- '^.*?<a
href="(.*?)">(.*?)</a>.*<td>(.*?)</td>.*$'
>>>>>> ? out <- data.frame(
>>>>>> ? ? ? url = gsub( rx, "\\1", txt ),
>>>>>> ? ? ? group = gsub( rx, "\\2", txt ),
>>>>>> ? ? ? description = gsub( rx, "\\3", txt ),
>>>>>> ? ? ? stringsAsFactors = FALSE
>>>>>> ? ? ? )
>>>>>> ? out$group <- sub( "...", ".*",
out$group, fixed = TRUE )
>>>>>> ? out
>>>>>> }
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'll clean this up and write a man page if there is
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> interest in adding
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> this to R, but this might be more appropriate in a
package,
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> for example:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/rsitesearch/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Romain
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Liaw, Andy wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> From: Jonathan Baron
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 05/07/09 13:48, Liaw, Andy wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> From: Duncan Murdoch
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I'll incorporate the changes if you
like
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Yes. ?Please do. ?I understand that it
won't take effect
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> for a while.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> When it does, I'll change my site.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> ?What do you think
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> of the idea of adding a gmane (or other
archive) search to your
>>>>>>>>>> results page? ?Then if someone
doesn't like what the man pages
>>>>>>>>>> show, you can
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> send them
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> somewhere else, rather than leaving
them to find out the other
>>>>>>>>>> resources themselves.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> gmane has sample code for this on their
search page
>>>>>>>>>> search.gmane.org, so it looks
reasonably easy. ?I'd suggest
>>>>>>>>>> following their
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> last example,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> with a drop-down box to select mailing
lists, with comp.lang.r.*
>>>>>>>>>> as
>>>>>>>>>> an option for "all lists".
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Good idea. ?I will do this. ?But there are also
two
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> other good search
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> engines. ?Maybe I'll add all three search
alternatives.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> But then,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> according to Sheena Iyengar, people won't
choose any! ?Hmm.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Actually, I was thinking about a possible
RHelpSearch() in
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> addition, if
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Jon is no longer going to include the
R-help archive in the
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> search. ?I
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> used the current RSiteSearch() a lot more
for searching
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> R-help archive
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> than functions in packages. ?Ideas?
?comments?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> This is OK with me, but I don't want to do
it. ?I guess it would
>>>>>>>> search gmane. ?MarkMail is also pretty good, as
is
>>>>>>>> http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/ All these
are much better than
>>>>>>>> Namazu for searching the R-help list.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Sorry I didn't make it clear: ?I meant
something like the
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> gmaneSearcg()
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> that Romain posted, not hitting your site.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>>> Andy
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Jon
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Romain Francois
>>>>>> Independent R Consultant
>>>>>> +33(0) 6 28 91 30 30
>>>>>> http://romainfrancois.blog.free.fr
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of
Pennsylvania
>>>>> Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron
>>>>> Editor: Judgment and Decision Making
(http://journal.sjdm.org)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Notice: ?This e-mail message, together with any
attach...{{dropped:15}}
>>>>
>>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Romain Francois
> Independent R Consultant
> +33(0) 6 28 91 30 30
> http://romainfrancois.blog.free.fr
>
>
>
>