[R] help.start

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, W. C. Thacker wrote:

> Dear R experts,
> 
> I would greatly appreciate your help with R's hypertext online
> documentation, which I can pass on to our system manager.  We are
> running version 1.7 on sparc-sun-solaris2.9 using netscape7 browser
> for displaying the help.  The system is working, but there are a few
> frustrating details that I hope might be fixed.

So do we: take it up with Netscape!  They keep on breaking things that 
once worked: see the comments in ?browseURL, for example.

However, all my installations are under the name `netscape'.  It looks
like someone has renamed yours to `netscape7', in which case you will have
a different behaviour.  See the R function browseURL and its
documentation.
 
> Here are three problems we are having:
> 
> 1.  When the R session is terminated, the netscape7 session that was
> initiated by help.start is still active.  However, it no longer
> provides the R help.  Moreover, help.start in a new R session trys to
> initiate a new netscape7 session, causing R-unrelated conflicts.  Is
> there a way to get help.start to use the existing netscape7 session?

That's not what is supposed to happen, assuming you are using R and 
Netscape on the same machine, nor is it what I get.

> 2.  When searching using the help system's search engine, there is no
> problem following links forward.  But when returning to the list
> produced by the search, links are no longer active, so the search has
> to be repeated.  Is there any way to fix it so that links remain
> active?

It's a known problem with Mozilla-based browsers.  Try opening the forward 
link in a new tab or window.

> 3.  When using browseEnv I get the same problem as described in item 1
> above:  a new netscape7 session is started.  To avoid R-unrelated
> problems, I have had to shut down the existing netscape7 session, so
> that browseEnv, can start a new one.  Is there a way to get browseEnv
> to use the existing netscape7 session?

Well, browseEnv is *very* experimental and its HTML version may well not 
be continued, but it uses the same mechanism as help.start.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595