It's disappointing that many packages do not have a NEWS file. Perhaps CRAN should require NEWS or CHANGELOG, as long as the system is being reformed to potentially accommodate markdown anyway.
-Thomas Thomas J. Leeper http://www.thomasleeper.com On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 12:00 PM, <r-devel-requ...@r-project.org> wrote: > Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2015 12:39:34 -0400 > From: Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> > To: Mark van der Loo <mark.vander...@gmail.com>, kurt.hor...@wu.ac.at > Cc: R Devel Mailing List <r-devel@r-project.org>, Dirk Eddelbuettel > <e...@debian.org>, Imanuel Costigan <i.costi...@me.com> > Subject: Re: [Rd] NEWS.md support on CRAN > Message-ID: <55707f46.5010...@gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > On 04/06/2015 11:05 AM, Mark van der Loo wrote: >> FWIW (and a bit late in the discussion, I know), I for one do not care >> about having NEWS in md format at all. >> >> The solution the Yihui uses (linking to GH from NEWS.Rd) is really annoying >> for people with no direct Internet access. For example, I work at an >> institute that handles a lot of private data and most VM's with R on it >> have no direct internet access for that reason (of course internet is >> accessible but through an application running on a separate VM). >> >> Moreover, I as a user also do not care at all about links to GH #issues and >> which @user did what for each issue. These are details that are useful for >> people developing the package or for people who reported a bug. As a user I >> just want to read a short description like "bugfix: function f crashed on >> input y", or "function g is deprecated" without having to first navigate to >> another website. >> >> The most important thing about the NEWS is that it is easy to find (so in a >> fixed place), and aimed at users, not developers. It should come with the >> software, so it is also available when GH is offline or replaced with >> something new (since hey, didn't we all have a sourceforge or google code >> account in our younger days?). >> >> In short, I think that added value of NEWS.md is fairly limited but it does >> increase the risk of dispersing the NEWS all over the web. > > I'd disagree a little bit: NEWS should be both for users and > developers. The advantage I see to NEWS.md support is that it will > encourage people who are more comfortable writing in Markdown to include > the news in the package, rather than having a link to external news (as > Yihui did), or no news at all (as many packages do). > > It's pretty easy to have plain text news, but links in the news are > helpful. Links to bug reports are of most use to developers, but other > links are useful to users. For example, though I don't think anyone is > making use of this, it should be possible to have links from NEWS.Rd (or > NEWS.md when it is fully supported) directly into R's help system. That > would be especially useful for users. It would probably even work on > isolated systems, as long as they don't block access to the local http > server. > > Duncan Murdoch >> >> Best, >> Mark >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Op wo 3 jun. 2015 om 08:32 schreef Kurt Hornik <kurt.hor...@wu.ac.at>: >> >> > >>>>> Duncan Murdoch writes: >> > >> > > On 02/06/2015 11:05 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: >> > >> Hi Kurt, >> > >> >> > >> On 1 June 2015 at 14:02, Kurt Hornik wrote: >> > >> | >>>>> peter dalgaard writes: >> > >> | >> > >> | >> On 30 May 2015, at 01:20 , Imanuel Costigan <i.costi...@me.com> >> > wrote: >> > >> | >> >> > >> | >> So I assume this commit means NEWS.md is now no longer on >> > blacklist? >> > >> | >> >> > >> | >> > >> | > ....in the development version. Not true of released versions. >> > >> | >> > >> | Now also in r-patched. >> > >> >> > >> Nice. >> > >> >> > >> Now, is there a way for package authors to preview how a .md would be >> > >> rendered? I wrote mine with GitHub in mind, and they render fine. I >> > looked a >> > >> recently-uploaded README.md of mine on CRAN, and it got some of the >> > pandoc-y >> > >> parts wrong --- and looks unprofessional. >> > >> >> > >> I would like to avoid that. How can I? >> > >> > > In the short term, you should probably try to run pandoc with the same >> > > version and options as CRAN. Kurt, can you say what these are? If you >> > > (Dirk) know pandoc options that emulate Github, it would probably make >> > > sense for CRAN to use those. >> > >> > Sure. We currently have >> > >> > pandoc 1.12.4.2 >> > Compiled with texmath 0.6.6.1, highlighting-kate 0.5.8.5. >> > >> > which we use with --email-obfuscation=references. >> > >> > Best >> > -k >> > >> > > In the longer term, the plan is to include our own parser and renderer. >> > > At that point this would be easy. >> > >> > > Duncan Murdoch >> > >> >> > >> Dirk >> > >> >> > >> >> > >> | -k >> > >> | >> > >> | > -pd >> > >> | >> > >> | >> > >> | >> >> > https://github.com/wch/r-source/commit/9ffe87264a1cd59a31a829f72d57af0f1bfa327a >> > >> | >> >> > >> | >> Sent from my iPad >> > >> | >> >> > >> | >> On 23 May 2015, at 6:05 pm, Kurt Hornik <kurt.hor...@wu.ac.at> >> > wrote: >> > >> | >> >> > >> | >>>>>>>> Duncan Murdoch writes: >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>>>> On 22/05/2015 8:49 PM, Imanuel Costigan wrote: >> > >> | >>>>> Are there any plans for CRAN to support NEWS files in markdown? >> > Bit of a hassle to go the the package?s Github (or other like) site to read >> > NEWS. >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>>> Not as far as I know. There have been discussions about >> > increasing the >> > >> | >>>> support of Markdown, but so far the conclusion has been that >> > it's too >> > >> | >>>> hard to do -- the support is not stable enough on all the >> > platforms >> > >> | >>>> where R runs. >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>> There are actually two issues here. >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>> For CRAN, we could in principle take inst/NEWS.md files, convert >> > these >> > >> | >>> to HTML using pandoc, and use the HTML for the package web page. >> > (Would >> > >> | >>> need the CRAN incoming checks to be taught about inst/NEWS.md.) >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>> However, we cannot use such files for utils::news() because we do >> > not >> > >> | >>> (yet?) know how to reliably parse such files and extract the news >> > items >> > >> | >>> (and hence cannot really compute on the news information). >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>> Btw, currently only one package on CRAN has inst/NEWS.md (another >> > one >> > >> | >>> has NEWS.md at top level). >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>> Best >> > >> | >>> -k >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>>> Markdown is allowed for vignettes (because the package author >> > processes >> > >> | >>>> those), so I'd suggest putting your news into a vignette instead >> > of a >> > >> | >>>> news file. Put in a token news file that points to the vignette >> > so >> > >> | >>>> users can find it. >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>>> Duncan Murdoch >> > >> | >>> >> > >> | >>>> ______________________________________________ >> > >> | >>>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> > >> | >>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> > >> | >> >> > >> | >> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] >> > >> | >> >> > >> | >> ______________________________________________ >> > >> | >> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> > >> | >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> > >> | >> > >> | > -- >> > >> | > Peter Dalgaard, Professor, >> > >> | > Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School >> > >> | > Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark >> > >> | > Phone: (+45)38153501 >> > >> | > Email: pd....@cbs.dk Priv: pda...@gmail.com >> > >> | >> > >> | > ______________________________________________ >> > >> | > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> > >> | > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> > >> | >> > >> | ______________________________________________ >> > >> | R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> > >> | https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> > >> >> > >> > > ______________________________________________ >> > > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> > >> > ______________________________________________ >> > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> > >> ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel