[Rd] suggestion to fix packageDescription() for Windows users

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 17/06/2017 7:10 AM, Ben Marwick wrote:
> Recently I was trying to cite a package where the authors have ä
> and ø in their names. I found that on Windows the citation() function
> did not return the authors' names at all, but on Linux there was no
> problem (sessionInfos at the bottom):
>
> On Windows, no author names are returned:

I'm not seeing this.  You have fairly strange localization settings; see 
comments below.

>
> #---------------
>
>  > citation("readr")
>
> To cite package ‘readr’ in publications use:
>
>    (2017). readr: Read Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
>    https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr
>
> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
>
>    @Manual{,
>      title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
>      year = {2017},
>      note = {R package version 1.1.1},
>      url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
>    }
>
> ATTENTION: This citation information has been auto-generated from the
> package DESCRIPTION file and may need manual editing, see
> ‘help("citation")’.
> #---------------
>
> On Linux we do see the author names:
>
> #---------------
>  > citation("readr")
>
> To cite package ‘readr’ in publications use:
>
>    Hadley Wickham, Jim Hester and Romain Francois (2017). readr:
>    Read Rectangular Text Data. R package version 1.1.1.
>    https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr
>
> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
>
>    @Manual{,
>      title = {readr: Read Rectangular Text Data},
>      author = {Hadley Wickham and Jim Hester and Romain Francois},
>      year = {2017},
>      note = {R package version 1.1.1},
>      url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readr},
>    }
> #---------------
>
> This appears to be an OS-dependent encoding issue. The citation function
> does not take an encoding argument, so it's not possible to set the
> encoding at the point where that function is used. The citation function
> working with the packageDescription function, which does have an
> encoding argument, but the default is not useful for Windows when there
> is an encoding set in the DESCRIPTION of the package (in this case UTF-8).
>
> We can set the encoding argument in packageDescription so it works in
> Windows to give the authors as expected, but it is very inconvenient to
> generate citations directly from the output of this function. So I'd
> like to propose a solution this problem by changing one line in the
> packageDescription function, like so, from:
>
> #---------------
> if (missing(encoding) && Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE") == "C")
> #---------------
>
> to:
>
> #---------------
> if ((missing(encoding) && Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE") == "C") |
> unname(Sys.info()['sysname']) == "Windows")
> #---------------
>
> If I understand correctly, that will force ASCII//TRANSLIT encoding when
> DESCRIPTION files are read by packageDescription() on Windows machines.
> The upside is that Windows users will get the authors in the package
> citation, unlike the current situation. The downside is that the exotic
> symbols in the authors' names are replaced with common ones that are
> similar.
>
> I think getting the citations to easily include the authors' names is
> pretty important, even if their names have exotic characters, so this is
> worth fixing. Is this edit to packageDescription the best way to solve
> this problem of exotic characters preventing the authors' names from
> showing on Windows?
>
> thanks,
>
> Ben
>
>
>
>
> Windows sessionInfo
>
> #---------------
>  > sessionInfo()
> R version 3.4.0 Patched (2017-05-10 r72670)
> Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
> Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service Pack 1
>
> Matrix products: default
>
> locale:
> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_Australia.1252
> [2] LC_CTYPE=Chinese (Simplified)_People's Republic of China.936
> [3] LC_MONETARY=English_Australia.1252
> [4] LC_NUMERIC=C
> [5] LC_TIME=English_Australia.1252

I don't know what English_Australia.1252 does that's different from what 
I use (English_Canada.1252), but the Chinese locale setting could cause 
trouble.  Could you try setting this (presumably in the Windows control 
panel) to be consistent?  You're using a much simpler setting on Linux.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>   [1] readr_1.1.1    compiler_3.4.0 R6_2.2.1       hms_0.3
> tools_3.4.0
>   [6] tibble_1.3.3   yaml_2.1.14    Rcpp_0.12.11   knitr_1.16
> rlang_0.1.1
> [11] fortunes_1.5-4
> #---------------
>
> Linux sessionInfo:
>
> #---------------
>  > sessionInfo()
> R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21)
> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> Running under: Ubuntu 16.10
>
> locale:
>   [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
>   [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
>   [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
>   [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
>   [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] tools_3.3.1 yaml_2.1.14 knitr_1.16
> #---------------
>
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