[RkWard-devel] Basic help system in SVN

[SJR]

Am Montag, 8. Januar 2007 18:03 schrieb Thomas Friedrichsmeier:
> Hi!
>
> I have now added a basic help system for RKWard in the SVN tree. This can
> be used both to document plugins, and to provide more general information
> on rkward features. It supports links between those help pages, as well as
> to R help pages and external sources.

Great! How much use can be made of images? 

>
> The documentation format used, is not yet documented, itself, but I hope
> the basic format is understandable as is. It is based on a simple XML,
> which is translated to a HTML page internally. You can even use real HTML
> inside the documentation, but please try to avoid this, except for some
> simple constructs such as <b>, <i> or <ul>.

Okay

>
> To give it a try right now, you will (after an svn update) have to do the
> following steps:
>
> 1) make -f Makefile.svn
> 2) ./configure
> (these two are needed, again, because I added a whole new subdirectory,
> with a new Makefile.am)
> 3) make install (so the help pages will get found)
>

Yep

> I intend to prepare a preview release soon, and soon afterwards to declare
> a feature freeze for the next release (more details on that, later).

Good news! Lately there are many updates of RKWard. I will try to find some 
time and places to announce it more general when the time for the release has 
come. Maybe Newsforge or ..., we will see. Certainly will will need some 
Updates of the translations. There were some really bad mistakes in the 
German translation (fixed some weeks ago) due to changes in the "core" of 
RKWard (possible?). The same applies to the french as far as I could see. But 
I was not able to make changes accordingly due to lack of profound French 
knowledge. Maybe some native speakers could help out. Or what about R. 
Lacour, who posted some weeks ago?

> So 
> please commit any new features now, or delay them.

Feature freeze since last week here. I planed to add round() to the 
distribution plug-ins (the output is awefull to read right now if a vector of 
data is entered) but this would require some time and therefore I'll postpone 
it to the next release.

> Adding new help pages, 
> other documentation, bug fixes, etc. will still be possible of course.
>

Great, good that you follow practices as other projects have.

Regarding bug fixes. I think it would be beneficial to have some kind of test 
suite/tools (as other software project (Gnumeric for handling of XLS-files 
e.g.) have. This could be for example set of data or functions to be used 
before every new release. By using them everybody could semi-automatically 
test RKWard. Of course not for this or the next release but for those in 
future. I'm not aware if something exists for R (I doubt that). More precise, 
a test suite could consist of set of data which are known to be difficult to 
handle (size 32k -> 64k e.g.? or whatever) in combination with typical 
workflow scenarios (start plug-in see if required packes are loaded, test if 
logic makes sense ...). Or some kind of check list one has to go through 
before a plug-in is officially is released. This would be even more important 
when new contributors commit changes. I long term it's maybe impractical to 
expect that you (Thomas) will have the time to check each plug-in bit for 
bit.
After all RKWard is aimed to be used in science and there is nothing more 
worse than a tool that produces faulty results (something that RKward doesn't 
do right now of course ;) ). I guess you know what I mean. I will try to come 
up with some thought but right now I have no idea how to design something. To 
be honest a rather difficult and complex task if not even impossible to 
realize.

> Regards
> Thomas


Stefan