[ESS] help screen not working for ESS/R

[Marc Schwartz]

On Nov 18, 2010, at 7:27 PM, Lucia Lam wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> I've just started using Emacs and ESS so please forgive me if this question
> have been answered elsewhere.
> In my inferior R, when I type help("mean"), I get the following error
> message.
> 
> Errror in help("mean", htmlhelp = FALSE) :
>  unused argument(s) (htmlhelp = FALSE)
> 
> Within emacs, none of my help files will open. Whereas the help files work
> fine in a terminal with R opened.
> I would like to be able to use the R help files within emacs, ideally with
> the help file popping open in another frame. Please help!
> 
> <ess-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>GNU Emacs 23.2.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+
> Version 2.16.1)
>> Sys.info()
> sysname    "Linux"
> release       "2.6.28-19-generic"
> version        "#66-Ubuntu SMP Sat Oct 16 18:00:58 UTC 2010"
> machine      "x86_64"
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> Lucia


Lucia,

Put the following in your ~/.emacs file:

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


The argument for html based help changed in R 2.10.0 when the new dynamically generated help pages were implemented.


HTH,

Marc Schwartz