[R] what constitutes a 'complete sentence'?

[William Dunlap]

> The CRAN guidelines should be rewritten so that they say what they *mean*.
> If a complete sentence is not actually required --- and it seems
abundantly clear
> that it is not --- then guidelines should not say so.  Rather they should
say,
> clearly and comprehensibly, what actually *is* required.

This may be true, but also think of the user when you write the description.
If you are scanning a long list of descriptions looking for a package to
use,
seeing a description that starts with 'A package for' just slows you down.
Seeing a description that includes 'designed to' leaves you wondering if the
implementation is woefully incomplete.  You want to go beyond what CRAN
can test for.


Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 3:26 PM, Rolf Turner <r.turner at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:

> On 04/07/15 06:27, Yihui Xie wrote:
>
>> Sigh, how natural it is to say "This package ...", but you probably
>> don't know a package can be easily rejected by CRAN simply because of
>> this phrase "This package" (it has been clearly stated in the R-exts
>> manual).
>>
>
> Urrrkkkk!  I *did* "know" that, but had forgotten.  Apologies for my
> wrong-headed suggestion.  Thanks for pointing out my error.
>
>  I don't think the grammar is the problem here. When in doubt, I always
>> check what MASS does:
>> http://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/MASS/index.html Turns out its
>> description is not a complete sentence, either.
>>
>> Sounds like R has become a language for statistical computing and
>> graphics, plus English grammar since 3.0.x.
>>
>
> The CRAN guidelines should be rewritten so that they say what they
> *mean*.  If a complete sentence is not actually required --- and it seems
> abundantly clear that it is not --- then guidelines should not say so.
> Rather they should say, clearly and comprehensibly, what actually *is*
> required.
>
>
> cheers,
>
> Rolf Turner
>
> --
> Technical Editor ANZJS
> Department of Statistics
> University of Auckland
> Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276
>
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