On r-universe package websites some url syntax such as `<doi:>` in DESCRIPTION files doesn't render as hyperlinks

[remlapmot]

This is a super minor issue but I thought I'd check if you'd spotted it.

In the Description: field of the DESCRIPTION file (and I guess in helpfile documentation as well) r-universe doesn't render some R linking syntax as URLs. These are <doi:>, <url:>, <arxiv:>, <issn:>, <isbn:>, <ftp:> - there may be others - apologies I don't know where the official docs are for these.

Here are some examples where they haven't been rendered

• <doi:>/<DOI:> https://remlapmot.r-universe.dev/OneSampleMR

• <url:>/<URL:> https://cran.r-universe.dev/flexsurv/doc/manual.html#ajfit

• <arxiv:>/<arXiv:> https://cran.r-universe.dev/EATME

• <issn:>/<ISSN:> https://cran.r-universe.dev/recapr

• <isbn:>/<ISBN:> https://cran.r-universe.dev/cinterpolate

• <ftp:> https://cran.r-universe.dev/homologene

Whereas these do render as hyperlinks on CRAN, e.g. https://cran.r-project.org/package=OneSampleMR.

[jeroen]

Thanks for the suggestion! I noticed this as well, but I wasn't sure if it is a good idea to inject html code here.

Also unfortunately R does not expose the code it uses to parse these urls (I think it is done with htmlify_text which is inlined inside tools:::.DESCRIPTION_to_HTML.

Also if I look at the CRAN pages, only the doi: urls are linked? For the examples above the arxiv/isbn/issn urls do not?

[remlapmot]

Oh yes - sorry I didn't check all the CRAN pages.

Also there is an unexported linkify() function in pkgdown which can handle the doi, arxiv, and I think ftp and http (this function seems to produce a bad URL if there is a space after the :).

pkgdown:::linkify("<arXiv:2203.03384>")
#> [1] "&lt;<a href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.03384'>arXiv:2203.03384</a>&gt;"

pkgdown:::linkify("<doi:10.1016/j.jeconom.2015.06.004>")
#> [1] "&lt;<a href='https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeconom.2015.06.004'>doi:10.1016/j.jeconom.2015.06.004</a>&gt;"

^{Created on 2024-06-05 with reprex v2.1.0}

[jeroen]

OK I have implemented it for doi: and arxiv: and https:// links at least. Do you want to check some packages if it seems to work now? I'm not sure yet if it is worth implementing the others (isbn, ftp, etc).

[remlapmot]

Works beautifully - thanks very much.

I agree that those other ones don't seem worth it.