[Rd] help system does not work (PR#499)

[bates@stat.wisc.edu]

jgm@qed.econ.queensu.ca writes:

> Full_Name: James MacKinnon
> Version: Version 1.0.0
> OS: Debian 2.1
> Submission from: (NULL) (24.141.113.138)
> 
> 
> I am a novice at R, so I am not totally sure that this is a bug, but
> I think it must be. When I type help.start() or ?help, Netscape
> starts up, as it should, but it displays my normal home page, not
> any help for R. The relevant documents exist in /usr/lib/R/doc/html,
> but Netscape does not seem to know about them when it is started
> from within R. I cannot figure out how to tell Netscape about them.
> 
> I simply installed the Debian package from one of the R
> websites. The file I used is r-base_1.0.0-1_i386.deb.

Hello James,

When you use help.start it is supposed to create and populate a
directory ~/.R.  Within there there should be an html directory and
links to several of the html files in /usr/lib/R/doc/html.

Could you check that this directory exists?  My version (under Debian
2.2 and using an experimental r-base_1.0.1-0) looks like

  /u9/bates/.R/doc/html:
  total 19
  drwxrwxr-x    3 bates    bates        1024 Mar 22 09:05 .
  drwxrwxr-x    3 bates    bates        1024 Mar 22 09:05 ..
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          25 Mar 22 09:05 R.css -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/R.css
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          30 Mar 22 09:05 about.html -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/about.html
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          28 Mar 22 09:05 faq.html -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/faq.html
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          33 Mar 22 09:05 function.html -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/function.html
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          30 Mar 22 09:05 index.html -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/index.html
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          28 Mar 22 09:05 left.jpg -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/left.jpg
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          28 Mar 22 09:05 logo.jpg -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/logo.jpg
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          30 Mar 22 09:05 logosm.jpg -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/logosm.jpg
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          38 Mar 22 09:05 packages-foot.html -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/packages-foot.html
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          38 Mar 22 09:05 packages-head.html -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/packages-head.html
  -rw-r--r--    1 bates    bates       14580 Mar 22 09:05 packages.html
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          33 Mar 22 09:05 resource.html -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/resource.html
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          29 Mar 22 09:05 right.jpg -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/right.jpg
  drwxrwxr-x    2 bates    bates        1024 Mar 22 09:05 search
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          33 Mar 22 09:05 template.html -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/template.html
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          31 Mar 22 09:05 thanks.html -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/thanks.html
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 bates    bates          26 Mar 22 09:05 up.jpg -> /usr/lib/R/doc/html/up.jpg

BTW, my daughter, who is a student at Queen's, tells me that you are
having wonderful weather right now.  She was down to the lakefront to
do some reading yesterday.

--
Douglas Bates                            bates@stat.wisc.edu
Statistics Department                    608/262-2598
University of Wisconsin - Madison        http://www.stat.wisc.edu/~bates/

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