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<p>Thanks for your comments Frank.</p>
<p>Ha, yes it's ancient but still has a place. Yes "reply all": Back To: sender (if it's to someone in particular) and cc the list. But on general topics where lots of people are on the thread, just To: datatable-help alone is fine. Personally I prefer "top posting". Like I'm doing now. I only scroll down if I need to. I didn't notice the history was building up. If you comment inline later, then say "scroll down for comments inline" or something at the top. Note that Nabble collapses the history for you so threads are much easier to read there. Or I tend to read via RSS (gmane) in Outlook, so it feels like an email inbox which turns bold on new posts. You only need to subscribe to post (spam control). Most people turn off mail delivery pretty quickly I imagine (or setup an auto rule to move into a folder, but then you might as well subscribe to RSS I guess).</p>
<p>S.O. is quite strict: must be clear questions with a clear answer, only one of which can be accepted. No opinion, voting, discussing or notices (enter mailing lists). Chat room is good but for quick chat when people are in the room at the same time. Many companies (sensibly) block chat access, though. Mailing lists allows all timezones a chance at a slower pace. Anonymity is just as acceptable and as easy in both places.</p>
<p>Matthew</p>
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<p>On 26.04.2013 21:34, Frank Erickson wrote:</p>
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<div dir="ltr">I disagree with the criticism of data.table's complexity (in the OP). There's nothing wrong with overloading the syntax (that is what CS people call it, right?). As long as Matthew's in control of it, it's likely to have some internal consistency (which, of course, he could explain). However, I like the suggestion to add options (defaulting to something globally adjustable) to disable some of the overloading. Along similar lines (I think), I find unique.data.table very unintuitive. I can see how it could be useful, but strongly prefer base::unique for my current applications.
<div>Anyway, I have nothing particular to say about the piece of syntax you all are currently discussing. I just registered with this list to chime in here, instead of further cluttering SO (where eddi answered one of my questions yesterday). These emails sure are wide; must be like 1500px! Interesting to try out this ancient mailing-list form of communication. Please let me know if I should be using "Reply All" or actually quoting that massive thread (as everyone else seems to be doing with each post).</div>
<div>Frank</div>
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