[TxMt] R bundle: Command Usage

[Charilaos Skiadas]

On Jan 3, 2007, at 11:02 AM, Hans-Joerg Bibiko wrote:

> Hi Kevin,
>
>
> On 24 Dec 2006, at 23:20, Kevin Ballard wrote:
>
>> What is texscan? I never knew that, so I always just ignored the  
>> command ;)
>>

Actually, it was tex.scan, which is a simple ruby command scanning  
the string given by the variable tex. I think Kevin by accident  
mistyped it. (You can see the revision diff).

What a difference a dot makes, eh?

>> I'm not sure the command is necessary, though, as you can get help  
>> on each function really easily, and if you need a template for  
>> args, there's always Insert Command Template.
>>
>
> [...]
>
>> Arguably, this shows the default S3 method args when you give it  
>> the root, like it shows the args for mean.default when you give it  
>> mean, but Insert Command Template could always be tweaked to use  
>> foo.default if you just give it foo (and foo.default exists).
>>
>
> Yes of course. 'Insert Command Template' goes hand in hand with  
> 'Command Usage'.
>
> My point was that 'Command Usage' could be sometimes helpful, if I  
> only want to know, what is the default of a variable, for instance.
> I don't know who wrote this command and why did he/she use  
> 'texscan' to parse the R help files written in TeX.
> I also don't know this function 'texscan' but I suppose that this  
> function gives you the text specified within the LaTeX tag \begin 
> {Usage}.
>
I like the command too, though I don't really use it much at this  
point, (need to open the actual help file most of the times). I wrote  
the command originally, and looking at the revision history of the  
command would show that it was tex.scan. Does it work as expected if  
you make that change? If so, I don't really see the advantage of  
parsing the HTML file instead.
>
> My other question was who is 'responsible' for the R bundle and can  
> upload this changed version?
> I know the bundles are more or less a collaborative work but I  
> believe that someone should organize these ;)

I think that's a bit unclear at the moment. Hadley Wickham, I think  
did the original import. Then Allan did some cleanup work on it. Then  
it stayed dormant for quite some time, until I started using R and  
started adding stuff to the bundle. Lately Kevin Ballard was using R  
and did some great work on the bundle. And now Hans has sent a lot of  
suggestions and improvements to the commands. So in some sense there  
is no official maintainer, though I would consider myself one of the  
maintainers, unfortunately overwhelmed at the moment with lots of  
other work, both textmate and real. If tex.scan instead of texscan  
works for you, then we can perhaps leave this command as is for now  
(well, with tex.scan instead of texscan).

> Best,
>
> Hans

Haris