[R] Help with Help on Windows

[Ross Boylan]

Thanks to Duncan for all his help.  I have one tip to pass on.
On 1/11/2013 10:34 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 11/01/2013 12:49 PM, Ross Boylan wrote:
>> R 2.15.2 installed as a regular user on Windows 7.
>>
>> Three issues:
>>
>> 1. There is a start menu item for "R 2.15.2 Help" that opens a local web
>> page.  If I click on packages, then base, then abbreviate I get
>> "Firefox can't find the file at
>> /C:/Users/rdboylan/Documents/R/R-2.15.2/library/base/html/abbreviate.html." 
>>
>> The page before, which did display, was
>> "file:///C:/Users/rdboylan/Documents/R/R-2.15.2/library/base/html/00Index.html" 
>>
>> (the link that fails is being tried with the same file:///C:/ start,
>> despite the text in the error message).
>>
>> Is this a bug?  Is there a way I can fix it?
>
> That's a bug, that start menu item should not have been installed. You 
> can't view the help unless R is running, because it is being generated 
> dynamically.
>
> You could create a shortcut with something like
>
> <R HOME>\bin\x64\Rterm.exe -e "{help.start(); Sys.sleep(1000)}"
>
> as the command, and set it to display minimized; it would run for 1000 
> seconds before it died.  I don't think this is a great solution 
> because it leaves that Rterm process sitting there, but maybe some 
> variation on this would do what you want.
>
> I will remove the code that generates the bad Start Menu entry from 
> the installer.
>
Running help.start() from my ESS session seems to work well.  It's 
basically running all the time anyway.
Of course, it's usually easier to to ?someFunction to get help with an 
individual function.
Ross