Announcement for users of package <kbd>sn</kbd>

Announcement for users of package sn

There are in fact two completely separate notices.

  1. The package sn will be deeply re-designed, both to incoroporate new theoretical developments and to accomplish some standard features of R packages. Therefore starting from the current release, 0.4-2 (2006-10-26), no major changes will be incorporated, before the new major version is ready. Until then, only bugs will be fixed or changes required by the R Development Team to accomplish some new features of R.

    When the new version will be realised (identified by some 1.x-y version number), its working and facilities will be somewhat different from the current one. Therefore, it is not advisable that one develops a lot of code under the assumption that certain functions will still be there. The following are broad guidelines about the possible changes:

    I am aware that this can cause some inconvience, regrettably. This is why this announcement is made well before the release of the new code. Also, bear in mind that the current version numbering 0.x-y was chosen exactly to signal that it is still experimental code, hence subject to major changes.

    I do not know when version 1.x will appear. It is not only a matter of writing code, but also of completing some supporting theoretical work.

    It is even more difficult to state anything on the production of a porting of version 1.x to Matlab. Volunteers to take on this responsibility are welcome.

  2. Versions prior to the current one, 0.4-2 (2006-10-26), contained a bug in function rmst. If you have an older version, please upgrade, and possibly re-run simulations if case of important work using rmst. I apologize for this problem. The function rst is not concerned with this issue.

A.Azzalini
January 2007


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