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Ben Marwick

2017-Jun-17 11:10 UTC

[Rd] suggestion to fix packageDescription() for Windows users

Recently I was trying to cite a package where the authors have ?
and ? in their names. I found that on Windows the citation() function 
did not return the authors' names at all, but on Linux there was no 
problem (sessionInfos at the bottom):

On Windows, no author names are returned:

#---------------

 > citation("readr")

To cite package ?readr? in publications use:

   (2017). readr: Read Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
   https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

   @Manual{,
     title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
     year = {2017},
     note = {R package version 1.1.1},
     url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
   }

ATTENTION: This citation information has been auto-generated from the
package DESCRIPTION file and may need manual editing, see
?help("citation")?.
#---------------

On Linux we do see the author names:

#---------------
 > citation("readr")

To cite package ?readr? in publications use:

   Hadley Wickham, Jim Hester and Romain Francois (2017). readr:
   Read Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
   https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

   @Manual{,
     title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
     author = {Hadley Wickham and Jim Hester and Romain Francois},
     year = {2017},
     note = {R package version 1.1.1},
     url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
   }
#---------------

This appears to be an OS-dependent encoding issue. The citation function 
does not take an encoding argument, so it's not possible to set the 
encoding at the point where that function is used. The citation function 
working with the packageDescription function, which does have an 
encoding argument, but the default is not useful for Windows when there 
is an encoding set in the DESCRIPTION of the package (in this case UTF-8).

We can set the encoding argument in packageDescription so it works in 
Windows to give the authors as expected, but it is very inconvenient to 
generate citations directly from the output of this function. So I'd 
like to propose a solution this problem by changing one line in the 
packageDescription function, like so, from:

#---------------
if (missing(encoding) && Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE") ==
"C")
#---------------

to:

#---------------
if ((missing(encoding) && Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE") ==
"C") |
unname(Sys.info()['sysname']) == "Windows")
#---------------

If I understand correctly, that will force ASCII//TRANSLIT encoding when 
DESCRIPTION files are read by packageDescription() on Windows machines. 
The upside is that Windows users will get the authors in the package 
citation, unlike the current situation. The downside is that the exotic 
symbols in the authors' names are replaced with common ones that are 
similar.

I think getting the citations to easily include the authors' names is 
pretty important, even if their names have exotic characters, so this is 
worth fixing. Is this edit to packageDescription the best way to solve 
this problem of exotic characters preventing the authors' names from 
showing on Windows?

thanks,

Ben




Windows sessionInfo

#---------------
 > sessionInfo()
R version 3.4.0 Patched (2017-05-10 r72670)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service Pack 1

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_Australia.1252
[2] LC_CTYPE=Chinese (Simplified)_People's Republic of China.936
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_Australia.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_Australia.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
  [1] readr_1.1.1    compiler_3.4.0 R6_2.2.1       hms_0.3 
tools_3.4.0
  [6] tibble_1.3.3   yaml_2.1.14    Rcpp_0.12.11   knitr_1.16 
rlang_0.1.1
[11] fortunes_1.5-4
#---------------

Linux sessionInfo:

#---------------
 > sessionInfo()
R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 16.10

locale:
  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
  [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_3.3.1 yaml_2.1.14 knitr_1.16
#---------------

Duncan Murdoch

2017-Jun-17 12:36 UTC

head link

[Rd] suggestion to fix packageDescription() for Windows users

On 17/06/2017 7:10 AM, Ben Marwick wrote:> Recently I was trying to cite a package where the authors have ?
> and ? in their names. I found that on Windows the citation() function
> did not return the authors' names at all, but on Linux there was no
> problem (sessionInfos at the bottom):
>
> On Windows, no author names are returned:
I'm not seeing this.  You have fairly strange localization settings; see 
comments below.
>
> #---------------
>
>  > citation("readr")
>
> To cite package ?readr? in publications use:
>
>    (2017). readr: Read Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
>    https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr
>
> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
>
>    @Manual{,
>      title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
>      year = {2017},
>      note = {R package version 1.1.1},
>      url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
>    }
>
> ATTENTION: This citation information has been auto-generated from the
> package DESCRIPTION file and may need manual editing, see
> ?help("citation")?.
> #---------------
>
> On Linux we do see the author names:
>
> #---------------
>  > citation("readr")
>
> To cite package ?readr? in publications use:
>
>    Hadley Wickham, Jim Hester and Romain Francois (2017). readr:
>    Read Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
>    https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr
>
> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
>
>    @Manual{,
>      title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
>      author = {Hadley Wickham and Jim Hester and Romain Francois},
>      year = {2017},
>      note = {R package version 1.1.1},
>      url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
>    }
> #---------------
>
> This appears to be an OS-dependent encoding issue. The citation function
> does not take an encoding argument, so it's not possible to set the
> encoding at the point where that function is used. The citation function
> working with the packageDescription function, which does have an
> encoding argument, but the default is not useful for Windows when there
> is an encoding set in the DESCRIPTION of the package (in this case UTF-8).
>
> We can set the encoding argument in packageDescription so it works in
> Windows to give the authors as expected, but it is very inconvenient to
> generate citations directly from the output of this function. So I'd
> like to propose a solution this problem by changing one line in the
> packageDescription function, like so, from:
>
> #---------------
> if (missing(encoding) && Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE") ==
"C")
> #---------------
>
> to:
>
> #---------------
> if ((missing(encoding) && Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE") ==
"C") |
> unname(Sys.info()['sysname']) == "Windows")
> #---------------
>
> If I understand correctly, that will force ASCII//TRANSLIT encoding when
> DESCRIPTION files are read by packageDescription() on Windows machines.
> The upside is that Windows users will get the authors in the package
> citation, unlike the current situation. The downside is that the exotic
> symbols in the authors' names are replaced with common ones that are
> similar.
>
> I think getting the citations to easily include the authors' names is
> pretty important, even if their names have exotic characters, so this is
> worth fixing. Is this edit to packageDescription the best way to solve
> this problem of exotic characters preventing the authors' names from
> showing on Windows?
>
> thanks,
>
> Ben
>
>
>
>
> Windows sessionInfo
>
> #---------------
>  > sessionInfo()
> R version 3.4.0 Patched (2017-05-10 r72670)
> Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
> Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service Pack 1
>
> Matrix products: default
>
> locale:
> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_Australia.1252
> [2] LC_CTYPE=Chinese (Simplified)_People's Republic of China.936
> [3] LC_MONETARY=English_Australia.1252
> [4] LC_NUMERIC=C
> [5] LC_TIME=English_Australia.1252
I don't know what English_Australia.1252 does that's different from what
I use (English_Canada.1252), but the Chinese locale setting could cause 
trouble.  Could you try setting this (presumably in the Windows control 
panel) to be consistent?  You're using a much simpler setting on Linux.

Duncan Murdoch
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>   [1] readr_1.1.1    compiler_3.4.0 R6_2.2.1       hms_0.3
> tools_3.4.0
>   [6] tibble_1.3.3   yaml_2.1.14    Rcpp_0.12.11   knitr_1.16
> rlang_0.1.1
> [11] fortunes_1.5-4
> #---------------
>
> Linux sessionInfo:
>
> #---------------
>  > sessionInfo()
> R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21)
> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> Running under: Ubuntu 16.10
>
> locale:
>   [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
>   [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
>   [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
>   [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
>   [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] tools_3.3.1 yaml_2.1.14 knitr_1.16
> #---------------
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

Ben Marwick

2017-Jun-17 13:13 UTC

head link

[Rd] suggestion to fix packageDescription() for Windows users

Hi Duncan,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, it does seem to be specific to the CTYPE 
setting to Chinese on Windows. If I set it to English using 
Sys.setlocale() there is no problem, then back to Chinese and the 
authors disappear:

Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL","English")
citation("readr")

#' To cite package ?readr? in publications use:
#'
#'   Hadley Wickham, Jim Hester and Romain Francois (2017). readr: Read
#' Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
#' https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr
#'
#' A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#'
#' @Manual{,
#'   title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
#'   author = {Hadley Wickham and Jim Hester and Romain Francois},
#'   year = {2017},
#'   note = {R package version 1.1.1},
#'   url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
#' }


Sys.setlocale("LC_CTYPE", "Chinese")
citation("readr")

#'
#' To cite package ?readr? in publications use:
#'
#'   (2017). readr: Read Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
#' https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr
#'
#' A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#'
#' @Manual{,
#'   title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
#'   year = {2017},
#'   note = {R package version 1.1.1},
#'   url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
#' }
#'
#' ATTENTION: This citation information has been auto-generated from the
#' package DESCRIPTION file and may need manual editing, see
#' ?help("citation")?.

Where do we go from here? I do want to use the Chinese locale with R on 
Windows (and perhaps others do too), so switching the locale isn't a fix.

Thanks,

Ben

On 17/06/2017 10:36 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:> On 17/06/2017 7:10 AM, Ben Marwick wrote:
>> Recently I was trying to cite a package where the authors have ?
>> and ? in their names. I found that on Windows the citation() function
>> did not return the authors' names at all, but on Linux there was no
>> problem (sessionInfos at the bottom):
>>
>> On Windows, no author names are returned:
>
> I'm not seeing this.  You have fairly strange localization settings;
see
> comments below.
>
>>
>> #---------------
>>
>>  > citation("readr")
>>
>> To cite package ?readr? in publications use:
>>
>>    (2017). readr: Read Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
>>    https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr
>>
>> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
>>
>>    @Manual{,
>>      title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
>>      year = {2017},
>>      note = {R package version 1.1.1},
>>      url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
>>    }
>>
>> ATTENTION: This citation information has been auto-generated from the
>> package DESCRIPTION file and may need manual editing, see
>> ?help("citation")?.
>> #---------------
>>
>> On Linux we do see the author names:
>>
>> #---------------
>>  > citation("readr")
>>
>> To cite package ?readr? in publications use:
>>
>>    Hadley Wickham, Jim Hester and Romain Francois (2017). readr:
>>    Read Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
>>    https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr
>>
>> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
>>
>>    @Manual{,
>>      title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
>>      author = {Hadley Wickham and Jim Hester and Romain Francois},
>>      year = {2017},
>>      note = {R package version 1.1.1},
>>      url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
>>    }
>> #---------------
>>
>> This appears to be an OS-dependent encoding issue. The citation
function
>> does not take an encoding argument, so it's not possible to set the
>> encoding at the point where that function is used. The citation
function
>> working with the packageDescription function, which does have an
>> encoding argument, but the default is not useful for Windows when there
>> is an encoding set in the DESCRIPTION of the package (in this case
>> UTF-8).
>>
>> We can set the encoding argument in packageDescription so it works in
>> Windows to give the authors as expected, but it is very inconvenient to
>> generate citations directly from the output of this function. So
I'd
>> like to propose a solution this problem by changing one line in the
>> packageDescription function, like so, from:
>>
>> #---------------
>> if (missing(encoding) && Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE") ==
"C")
>> #---------------
>>
>> to:
>>
>> #---------------
>> if ((missing(encoding) && Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE")
== "C") |
>> unname(Sys.info()['sysname']) == "Windows")
>> #---------------
>>
>> If I understand correctly, that will force ASCII//TRANSLIT encoding
when
>> DESCRIPTION files are read by packageDescription() on Windows machines.
>> The upside is that Windows users will get the authors in the package
>> citation, unlike the current situation. The downside is that the exotic
>> symbols in the authors' names are replaced with common ones that
are
>> similar.
>>
>> I think getting the citations to easily include the authors' names
is
>> pretty important, even if their names have exotic characters, so this
is
>> worth fixing. Is this edit to packageDescription the best way to solve
>> this problem of exotic characters preventing the authors' names
from
>> showing on Windows?
>>
>> thanks,
>>
>> Ben
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Windows sessionInfo
>>
>> #---------------
>>  > sessionInfo()
>> R version 3.4.0 Patched (2017-05-10 r72670)
>> Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
>> Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service Pack 1
>>
>> Matrix products: default
>>
>> locale:
>> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_Australia.1252
>> [2] LC_CTYPE=Chinese (Simplified)_People's Republic of China.936
>> [3] LC_MONETARY=English_Australia.1252
>> [4] LC_NUMERIC=C
>> [5] LC_TIME=English_Australia.1252
>
> I don't know what English_Australia.1252 does that's different from
what
> I use (English_Canada.1252), but the Chinese locale setting could cause
> trouble.  Could you try setting this (presumably in the Windows control
> panel) to be consistent?  You're using a much simpler setting on Linux.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
>>
>> attached base packages:
>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>>
>> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>>   [1] readr_1.1.1    compiler_3.4.0 R6_2.2.1       hms_0.3
>> tools_3.4.0
>>   [6] tibble_1.3.3   yaml_2.1.14    Rcpp_0.12.11   knitr_1.16
>> rlang_0.1.1
>> [11] fortunes_1.5-4
>> #---------------
>>
>> Linux sessionInfo:
>>
>> #---------------
>>  > sessionInfo()
>> R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21)
>> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>> Running under: Ubuntu 16.10
>>
>> locale:
>>   [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
>>   [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
>>   [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
>>   [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
>>   [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
>> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>>
>> attached base packages:
>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>>
>> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>> [1] tools_3.3.1 yaml_2.1.14 knitr_1.16
>> #---------------
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>

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