R devel - Nov 2011 - CRAN: How to list a non-Sweave doc under "Vignettes:" on package page?

Hi,

is it possible to have non-Sweave vignettes(*) in inst/doc/ be listed
under 'Downloads' on CRAN package pages?  For instance, in my R.rsp
package I have a inst/doc/report.pdf (part of the source *.tar.gz)
that is not detected/listed.  The PDF is not based on a Sweave
vignette but an *.tex.rsp vignette that is dynamically created via
inst/doc/Makefile.  It is listed

(*) BTW, can the term "vignette" be used for any inst/doc/ document,
or should it be reserved for Sweave+LaTeX-based documents?

Thanks

Henrik

I have the same question. I wish vignettes which are shown in CRAN and
the package documentation are not restricted to Sweave (or I missed
something in the R-exts manual?). What I did in the past was to cheat
Sweave by putting an Rnw document which is essentially a tex document
(I used my own functions to compile Rnw to tex).

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name
Department of Statistics, Iowa State University
2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA



On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 6:41 PM, Henrik Bengtsson <hb at biostat.ucsf.edu>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> is it possible to have non-Sweave vignettes(*) in inst/doc/ be listed
> under 'Downloads' on CRAN package pages? ?For instance, in my R.rsp
> package I have a inst/doc/report.pdf (part of the source *.tar.gz)
> that is not detected/listed. ?The PDF is not based on a Sweave
> vignette but an *.tex.rsp vignette that is dynamically created via
> inst/doc/Makefile. ?It is listed
>
> (*) BTW, can the term "vignette" be used for any inst/doc/
document,
> or should it be reserved for Sweave+LaTeX-based documents?
>
> Thanks
>
> Henrik
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

On 11/6/2011 7:41 PM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> is it possible to have non-Sweave vignettes(*) in inst/doc/ be listed
> under 'Downloads' on CRAN package pages?  For instance, in my R.rsp
> package I have a inst/doc/report.pdf (part of the source *.tar.gz)
> that is not detected/listed.  The PDF is not based on a Sweave
> vignette but an *.tex.rsp vignette that is dynamically created via
> inst/doc/Makefile.  It is listed
>
> (*) BTW, can the term "vignette" be used for any inst/doc/
document,
> or should it be reserved for Sweave+LaTeX-based documents?
>
I have a related problem/question and a request to R-Core to consider 
relaxing the requirements for vignettes when, for one reason or another,
they cannot be built entirely via Sweave.  In such cases, perhaps 
package authors can provide alternative metadata in the form of an
00index.html or something similar to allow such vignettes to be
more visible.

Those who face this problem would then be able to figure out a
Makefile or manual way to maintain the metadata file. What would be
required to implement this?

In my case, my Guerry package has a vignette, inst/doc/MultiSpat.pdf, 
originally built entirely with Sweave.  However, the vignette require()d 
a package only on R-Forge, which the author does not wish
to release to CRAN.  At some point, ~ R 2.10, this triggered a 
WARNING/ERROR from the CRAN check daemon, in spite of the fact that the
vignette .Rnw file contained the following hack designed to make sure 
that all necessary packages were available anywhere:

\subsection{Installation and loading of required packages}
Several packages must be installed to run the different analyses:
<<ni0, fig=F, eval=TRUE, echo=TRUE, debug=TRUE, results=hide, include 
=FALSE, width=7, height=7>>pkg <-
c("maptools","spdep","ade4","Guerry","spacemakeR")
inst.pkg <- row.names(installed.packages())
pkg2inst <- pmatch(pkg,inst.pkg)
if(any(is.na(pkg2inst[1:4]))) 
install.packages(pkg[which(is.na(pkg2inst[1:4]))],repos="http://cran.at.r-project.org")
if(is.na(pkg2inst[5]))
   install.packages("spacemakeR",
repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org")

library(maptools)
library(ade4)
library(spdep)
library(spacemakeR)
library(Guerry)
@

However, this hack was deemed unacceptable for a CRAN package vignette.
In the end, the only solution that would satisfy the CRAN check daemon 
was to delete the source inst/doc/MultiSpat.Rnw file from the package.

Consequently, the .pdf vignette remains in the package, but it is not 
listed as a vignette on CRAN, nor found via vignette()

best,
-Michael


-- 
Michael Friendly     Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca
Professor, Psychology Dept.
York University      Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814
4700 Keele Street    Web:   http://www.datavis.ca
Toronto, ONT  M3J 1P3 CANADA

G'day Henrik,

On Sun, 6 Nov 2011 16:41:22 -0800
Henrik Bengtsson <hb at biostat.ucsf.edu> wrote:
> is it possible to have non-Sweave vignettes(*) in inst/doc/ be listed
> under 'Downloads' on CRAN package pages?  
As far as I know, only by a little trick.  Create an Sweave based
vignette that uses the pdfpages package to include the .pdf file that
you want to have listed.  This dummy vignette should then be listed on
CRAN.

See the lasso2 package for an example.

The vignette in inst/doc/ in that package is actually a bit more
complicated than necessary.  As I think there is no point of having two
nearly identical copies of PDF files in a package, I use .buildignores
to have the original PDF file not included in the source package.  This
started to create a problem when R decided to rebuild vignettes during
the checking process and pdfpages decided to hang if the PDF file to be
included was missing.  

HTH.

Cheers,

	Berwin