ASCII equivalent to \eqn{\bar{x}} in Rd files

Question

I am writing the documentation for a function of an R package I am building.

In order to have a moderately nice aspect for the help file, I need the equivalent of \bar{x} in ASCII:

\eqn{\bar{x}}{ASCII equivalent}

just call it something like `x_bar` ..? – Tim Oct 28 '15 at 15:16 — Tim, Oct 28 '15 at 15:16

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 28 '15 at 18:29

Not sure there's a consensus on the best way to do this, it's more a matter of taste and clarity. Having faced this issue myself, two solutions I have used are:

y = \eqn{\bar{x}}{xbar}
y = \eqn{\bar{x}}{mean(x)}

The advantage of the latter is that when the help is displayed as ASCII, the user can copy/paste (send) the text to an R process, getting an example value for y. This assumes that \bar{x} is shorthand for the mean, as is often the case.

thank you. Yes, indeed, mean(x) seems more intuitive as well. — ralucaGui, Oct 28 '15 at 20:08

ASCII equivalent to \eqn{\bar{x}} in Rd files

1 Answers1