R devel - May 2016 - Submitting an updated package version to CRAN (Warning: non-ASCII characters)

Dear all:

I am updating the version of an R package I submitted last year on CRAN and
came across two questions that I would be grateful to seek any input about:

1) In the updated version of the package, I am adding a second example
dataset. This example dataset is a subset of a public database that
contains thousands of names. Upon running devtools::check(), I am only
getting one warning. ("Warning: found non-ASCII strings").

It seems this warning is coming from special characters in some of the
names. As it is ideal that the names should not be altered, I did not know
what approach to take. Should I simply include a note in my CRAN submission
indicating that the non-ASCII characters are meaningfully inherent to the
example data? Or, should I convert the names to ASCII characters (if that
is easily possible for so many cases), and indicate to users that names
have been altered (special characters removed)?

2) I have never submitted an updated version of a package to CRAN. I am
considering following a similar process to what I did to submit my original
version of the package to CRAN. That is, using devtools::release() and
including a note in a file called cran-comments.md to indicate that this is
not an original version submission, but rather, an updated version
submission. I found these advice on Hadley Wickhams site (
http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/release.html), but could not determine if this was
appropriate for version update submissions as well.

Thank you for sharing any advice!

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On 21/05/2016 21:25, Luck Buttered wrote:
> Dear all:
>
> I am updating the version of an R package I submitted last year on CRAN and
> came across two questions that I would be grateful to seek any input about:
>
> 1) In the updated version of the package, I am adding a second example
> dataset. This example dataset is a subset of a public database that
> contains thousands of names. Upon running devtools::check(), I am only
> getting one warning. ("Warning: found non-ASCII strings").
>
> It seems this warning is coming from special characters in some of the
> names. As it is ideal that the names should not be altered, I did not know
> what approach to take. Should I simply include a note in my CRAN submission
> indicating that the non-ASCII characters are meaningfully inherent to the
> example data? Or, should I convert the names to ASCII characters (if that
> is easily possible for so many cases), and indicate to users that names
> have been altered (special characters removed)?
You should follow the advice of the manual: 
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-exts.html#Encoding-issues 
.  There is not enough detail here to know what you currently do (let 
alone what you should do), but that message indicates that the encoding 
of non-ASCII stings (what you call 'special characters') has not been 
declared (and to be portable they should be in UTF-8).
> 2) I have never submitted an updated version of a package to CRAN. I am
> considering following a similar process to what I did to submit my original
> version of the package to CRAN. That is, using devtools::release() and
> including a note in a file called cran-comments.md to indicate that this is
> not an original version submission, but rather, an updated version
> submission. I found these advice on Hadley Wickhams site (
> http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/release.html), but could not determine if this was
> appropriate for version update submissions as well.
There is a list for discussing package preparation, r-package-devel.
> Thank you for sharing any advice!


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford

Thank you, Prof Brian Ripley. That is a helpful resource!

Since my only non-ASCII characters are in an example data frame, I think I
will use the iconv() function to convert that example data frame into
UTF-8. Then, I will indicate that R version >=2.10 must be in the Depends
field of the DESCRIPTION file, as the resource indicates.


On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 3:46 AM, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at
stats.ox.ac.uk>
wrote:
> On 21/05/2016 21:25, Luck Buttered wrote:
>
>> Dear all:
>>
>> I am updating the version of an R package I submitted last year on CRAN
>> and
>> came across two questions that I would be grateful to seek any input
>> about:
>>
>> 1) In the updated version of the package, I am adding a second example
>> dataset. This example dataset is a subset of a public database that
>> contains thousands of names. Upon running devtools::check(), I am only
>> getting one warning. ("Warning: found non-ASCII strings").
>>
>> It seems this warning is coming from special characters in some of the
>> names. As it is ideal that the names should not be altered, I did not
know
>> what approach to take. Should I simply include a note in my CRAN
>> submission
>> indicating that the non-ASCII characters are meaningfully inherent to
the
>> example data? Or, should I convert the names to ASCII characters (if
that
>> is easily possible for so many cases), and indicate to users that names
>> have been altered (special characters removed)?
>>
>
> You should follow the advice of the manual:
>
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-exts.html#Encoding-issues
> .  There is not enough detail here to know what you currently do (let alone
> what you should do), but that message indicates that the encoding of
> non-ASCII stings (what you call 'special characters') has not been
declared
> (and to be portable they should be in UTF-8).
>
> 2) I have never submitted an updated version of a package to CRAN. I am
>> considering following a similar process to what I did to submit my
>> original
>> version of the package to CRAN. That is, using devtools::release() and
>> including a note in a file called cran-comments.md to indicate that
this
>> is
>> not an original version submission, but rather, an updated version
>> submission. I found these advice on Hadley Wickhams site (
>> http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/release.html), but could not determine if this
>> was
>> appropriate for version update submissions as well.
>>
>
> There is a list for discussing package preparation, r-package-devel.
>
>
> Thank you for sharing any advice!
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
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