This blog is updated daily..
A general description is here.
Package help is now converted from Rd by the R-based converters that were first introduced in 2.9.0. This means
- Packages that were installed by R-devel after 2009-08-09 should not be used with earlier versions of R, and some aspects of package help will be missing if there are so used. (Currently text and latex help, eventually also the run-able examples.)
- Text help, latex help and examples for packages installed under the new system is converted on-demand from stored parsed Rd files. (Conversions stored in earlier installations are still used.)
The converters are still being polished and produce incorrect latex or HTML conersions for ca 20 packages. However, they correct fewer errors in the inputs and most errors seen have been the result of errors in package sources.
An experimental tag \Sexpr has been added to Rd files, to evaluate expressions at build, install, or render time. Currently install time and render time evaluation are supported but not used in base or contributed packages unless the environment variable USE_NEW_HELP is set during installation.
There have been various bug fixes and code reorganization in the Rd renderers Rd2HTML, Rd2latex, Rd2txt, and Rd2ex.
All example files are now created with either ASCII or UTF-8 encoding, and the encoding is only marked in the file if there is any non-UTF-8 code (previously it was marked if the help file had non-ASCII contents, possibly in other sections).