First steps

[rsbivand]

@Nowosad How would you prefer to proceed? Use branches and both cover the whole document, or divide up the document between us (and others?)?

[Nowosad]

I would think the latter option seems better to me. We could work on separate parts of the document, and then review/improve the other person's changes.

[rsbivand]

OK - could you suggest who does what? We should edit through branches, I think, and ask for review from all co-maintainers. Which new sections could be useful - books/blogs, installation from source (pointing to sf's README)?

[Nowosad]

Yes, I also think that editing through branches is the best idea. How about we split the work in the following way:

• [x] - Introduction - Roger
• [x] - Classes for spatial data and metadata - Roger
• [x] - Reading and writing spatial data - Jakub
• [x] - Handling spatial data - Jakub
• [x] - Visualizing spatial data - Jakub
• [x] - Analyzing spatial data - Roger

I also like the idea of these two new sections. The books/blogs section should contain a few (quite) up-to-date resources, because otherwise I would quickly become impossible to maintain. The installation section (maybe) should quickly explain the difference between binary and source package and then offer some installation tips (e.g., a link to sf's README).

Could you propose a deadline for the first drafts of our edits?

[rsbivand]

Thanks! Would a week be sufficient, so Monday 10/1? I also wondered about a new introductory section on CRS - again with links to the s2 blog and to other materials, perhaps the geocompr revision material?

[Nowosad]

Yes, a week for the first draft seems fine.

[Nowosad]

Quick question @rsbivand @zeileis -- how can I render the Spatial.md file to check if everything looks correct?

[rsbivand]

See: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ctv/vignettes/ctv-howto.html. For me simply - generating the HTML in the repo - this works:

library(ctv)
packageVersion("ctv")
x <- read.ctv("Spatial.md")
ctv2html(x)

[Nowosad]

Thanks!

[zeileis]

The Documentation.md here on GitHub and the ctv-howto on CRAN (and the pkgdown page) are essentially the same document. Jakub @Nowosad if something particular confused you in that vignette or something additional should be illustrated, let me know. I'm already preparing the next revision for CRAN.

What I just did is:

library("ctv")
ctv2html("Spatial.md")
browseURL("Spatial.html")
check_ctv_packages("Spatial.md")
## $`Packages in <info> but not in <packagelist>`
## character(0)
## 
## $`Packages in <packagelist> but not in <info>`
## character(0)
## 
## $`Packages in <packagelist> but not in repos`
## character(0)

So everything is in order here.

[Nowosad]

Thank you @zeileis. I plan to work on the Spatial cran task in the next few days, and will let you know if anything in the ctv documentation is confusing or could be improved.

[rsbivand]

For now revising section by section each in its branch - asked for review of introduction.

[Nowosad]

@rsbivand feel free to merge PR when you think they are ready.

[rsbivand]

Reading, Handling and Visualizing merged. I'll continue if you approve my edits, then read through the whole to see gaps/overlaps. Who else could we ask to review the edited version?

[Nowosad]

I have been thinking about, for example, Paula Moraga for Disease mapping and areal data analysis, Ege Rubak for Point Patterns, Alexis Comber for Spatial regression, David G Rossiter for Geostatistics, Hanna Meyer for Ecological analysis.

[rsbivand]

These seem fine, but are all senior insiders, so not really representative of the target readership. PRs from them, however, would be great! We still need to expand the links section to wip-books, blogs, etc.

Maybe Andy South @andysouth could suggest someone (possibly multiple) to read through and comment to try to add input from those who are not insiders?

[Nowosad]

Good idea. Another possible group of people who can help us here is the French Rspatial community - Sébastien Rochette @statnmap, Nicolas Roelandt @Bakaniko, Oliver Leroy @defuneste.

[Nowosad]

@rsbivand - quick question. How should I proceed if I want to make a small change to the task view? Should I push the change directly to the repo or always prepare PR for your review?

For example, now we state that mapsf has support for sf objects only. However, the current version also accepts SpatRasters (https://riatelab.github.io/mapsf/reference/mf_raster.html)...

[rsbivand]

For changes like this, I think changing the repo directly is fine.

[Nowosad]

Thanks -- will do.