[ESS] Is it worthy to switch to HTML help type in R?

[Marc Schwartz]

On May 17, 2010, at 9:15 AM, Rodney Sparapani wrote:

> On 05/16/10 08:15 PM, Stanley Chu wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>> 
>> The default help_type in R under ESS is "text". Thus when I type, e.g. ?lm, the help page appears in another buffer. I am wondering how to change this default to "html", so that the result of using ?[function] appears in a browser. I have tried to include options(help_type = "html") in my Rprofile.site, yet it does not work. I still have to use help(functionname, help_type = "html") to make it work.
>> 
>> My thought is the "html" help is more convenient because you can click hyperlinks in the current help page and "jump" to another function help. I wonder how is everyone efficiently using the help.
>> 
>> Thanks for sharing the thoughts.
>> Stanley
> 
> I usually do that with a help.start()
> 
> Rodney


If you are using ESS 5.5 (I believe) or greater, you can put the following into your ~/.emacs file:

  (setq inferior-ess-r-help-command "help(\"%s\", help_type=\"html\")\n")

HTH,

Marc Schwartz