Summary of mails concerning R help system -- really --

[Martin Maechler]

Excuse everyone my almost empty E-mail !!

>>>>> "FrL" == Friedrich Leisch <Friedrich.Leisch@ci.tuwien.ac.at> writes:

    FrL> Hi,

    FrL> here's a short summary of all the mails I got concerning the R
    FrL> help system during the last days ... I really want to have all
    FrL> open questions in this list, so if I forgot your most important
    FrL> topic please forgive (and remind me again) ... it's probably only
    FrL> because of lack of time such that I had to compile the list in a
    FrL> hurry ...

	.......

    FrL> 4) Rdconv -t rtf to support the windoze help format ... I
    FrL> definetely don't have time or any motivation to do that, so if
    FrL> somebody wants to do that, he's welcome.

In the  V&R (Venables & Ripley) Online Complements to MASS2,
	[page 3, producing Windows help files]
I've found that they provide a
	troff -> rtf
translation utility ("spwinhlp.zip" )
for S-plus help pages, and then mention the Windows help-compiler for 
producing windows *.hlp files

In principle, one could use this as

	foo.Rd	--->  foo.troff  -->  foo.rtf  --> foo.hlp
		 1		  2		3
 1: Rdconv
 2: spwinhlp
 3: Windows help compiler.

If anyone here (of you R-develers) is willing to do these steps,
I am sure that the CRAN maintainers will glad to include these *.hlp files
in the 'preformatted-help' directories.

However, I agree with Luke Tierney, that also for windows, HTML should be
enough in principle.

Martin
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