On Sun, 2006-04-23 at 05:57 -0400, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: > On 4/23/06, Philippe Grosjean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Tony Plate wrote: > > > [...] (see hereunder for full post) > > > However, maybe this can be partially addressed by having larger index > > > pages, each one pointing to many different small example pages. [...] > > > > Exactly! Speaking about "browsing" the tips, the key is not to have all > > tips on one page, but an index, table of content, summary, or > > whatever-you-call-it page. You browse that page and click on the links > > you want. This is more effective than browsing tens of thousands of > > lines to discover that the tips you are looking for is the forelast one, > > that is, the 9,999th one! > > > > You want to browse the code itself, not just an index. The way > you learn R is to look at a lot of code and not by having to waste > time jumping to dozens or hundreds of different pages.
Gabor /you/ might learn R best that way, but I doubt many people will. From my own experience and from teaching R to colleagues and with students on short courses is that they like a reasonable grounding in the basics to allow them to get started, and then when they started doing their own thing they want to ask "how do I do x?" Scanning a list of tips allows them to drill down to the few items that sound like they might answer their question. People don't want to read page after page of code - especially on a screen - just to find the one sentence or line of code that will help them solve their immediate problem. G > > _______________________________________________ > R-sig-wiki mailing list > [email protected] > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-wiki -- %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% *Note new Address and Fax and Telephone numbers from 10th April 2006* %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% Gavin Simpson [t] +44 (0)20 7679 0522 ECRC [f] +44 (0)20 7679 0565 UCL Department of Geography Pearson Building [e] gavin.simpsonATNOSPAMucl.ac.uk Gower Street London, UK [w] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfagls/cv/ WC1E 6BT [w] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfagls/ %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% _______________________________________________ R-sig-wiki mailing list [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-wiki
