R help - Sep 2003 - INDEX file as shown by library(help= ...)

Hola!

I thought that  one main purpose of the INDEX file as shown by
library(help = ...) was to give further pointers to use to search for 
help. But some pacakges have items in the index file with NONE help 
page, and further, non items in the index with help page. As an 
example I use 
> library(RColorBrewer)
> library(help=RColorBrewer)
# but this is not about RColorBrewer in particular, it is
general
>From the help I naturally gives
> ?ColorBrewer
Error in help("ColorBrewer") : No documentation for `ColorBrewer'
in
specified packages and libraries:
  you could try `help.search("ColorBrewer")'
which is not very helpful. To find out which objects there are in the 
package, I do
> ls(pos=2)
[1] "brewer.pal"         "display.brewer.pal"

and there are indeed help for this items. Should there be a rule that 
there should be help pages for the items in INDEX, maybe inforced by
Rcmd check
?

Kjetil Halvorsen

On Sat, 13 Sep 2003, kjetil brinchmann halvorsen wrote:
> and there are indeed help for this items. Should there be a rule that
> there should be help pages for the items in INDEX, maybe inforced by
> Rcmd check
The problem with enforcing it by Rcmd check is that INDEX need not be in
any easily parsed form.  A number of packages contain extra information
for the user in INDEX, which is a Good Thing, but makes it hard for
automated checking.

	-thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle