On 07/10/2015 1:39 PM, Tim Keitt wrote:> On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 11:29 AM, Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com >> wrote: > >> Another example: The "Author" of the Ecdat package is Yves Croissant < >> yves.croissant at let.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr>. I'm the Maintainer. At some >> point, I may add my name to the list of Authors but I certainly would never >> remove Yves' name. That package is, I think, exclusively data sets. I >> added functions, which I later spun off into a separate Edfun package; I'm >> listed as the Author and Maintainer of that. >> > > This reminded me of something I have always found curious about roles > listed in the DESCRIPTION file. Since there is no "maintainer" role in this > list: http://www.loc.gov/marc/relators/relaterm.html, which was used to get > the role names, you will be listed as the "creator" of the package when you > list yourself as maintainer even if you did not initiate the package or > even contribute code. >I think it was easier to (ab)use that role than to get a "Maintainer" role added to the standard ones. The description of "creator" is "A person or organization responsible for the intellectual or artistic content of a resource" The usual English meaning of "creator" would be close to "A person or organization originally responsible for the intellectual or artistic content of a resource" R's use of it is close to "A person or organization currently responsible for the intellectual or artistic content of a resource" Duncan Murdoch
On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:> I think it was easier to (ab)use that role than to get a "Maintainer" > role added to the standard ones. >Why bother with the relators list at all? THK http://www.keittlab.org/ [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
On Wed, 7 Oct 2015, Tim Keitt wrote:> On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> > wrote: > >> I think it was easier to (ab)use that role than to get a "Maintainer" >> role added to the standard ones.Also note that the "creator" in the MARC vocabulary is with respect to a _resource_ - which is different from the creation of a _work_ by an "author". In the case of the CRAN repository, the individual resources are the packages. And the maintainer is the person who is responsible for a package (aka resource) being made available (aka created) on CRAN. Also, the maintainer is the contact responsible for the resource. Therefore, using the "author" role for those who have created the code (aka work) and the "creator" role for those who have created the (CRAN) package (aka resource) seemed appropriate.> Why bother with the relators list at all?Certainly, it is better to use a standard vocabulary than creating a new domain-specific vocabulary to facilitate communication of the information outside the domain. Therefore, both the "person" and the "bibentry" objects try to follow models that were well established rather than starting out from scratch.> THK > > http://www.keittlab.org/ > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >