[RkWard-devel] Basic help system in SVN
SJR
stefan_roediger at gmx.de
Mon Jan 8 18:29:19 UTC 2007
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
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