[R] documentation / Rdconv/ Perl v.5

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, S.McClatchie wrote:

> System info:
>
> R ver. 1.3.0  (2001-06-22) on Windows 2000

[...]

> I want to start documenting my functions and see from the writing R
> extensions manual that "The translation [of Rd files] is carried out by the
> Perl script Rdconv in ‘$R_HOME/bin’ and by the installation scripts for
> packages". This suggests that I need to install Perl on my PC (is that
> right?).

Yes.

> Again, I see that: "Perl version 5 is needed for converting documentation
> written in Rd format to plain text, html, LaTEX, and to extract the
> examples. In addition, several other tools, in particular check and build
> (see Section 1.3 [Checking and building packages], page 7), require
> Perl."
>
> OK, so I hope this isn't naive, but are there instructions somewhere for
> getting and installing Perl ver. 5 for Windows 2000 (and configuring it to
> work with R?) or do I just search the web?

On Windows, see the file README.packages.  If you don't have that in the
top directory of your R installation, you didn't install support for
installing source packages, and you will need that.

The first thing to do is to upgrade to R 1.3.1 and check that option when
you do so.

You'll find it much the easiest to put your functions and documentation
into a source package and use Rcmd INSTALL on that.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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