[Rd] Re: [R] help output paged in separate window

[Prof Brian Ripley]

We do have an API for file.show and the underlying C (in 
src/unix/system.txt).  It seem clear to me that the Windows help 
code is incorrect (and at least it used to set a title).
Duncan changed it, and I cannot recall the exact rationale.

It seems that tkpager is also not doing what file.show says is needed.

Brian

On 25 May 2003, Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:

> Duncan Murdoch <dmurdoch at pair.com> writes:
> 
> > On 25 May 2003 15:35:47 +0200, you wrote:
> > >
> > >A bit of both, I think. The Unix version of help() has
> > >
> > >                  file.show(zfile, title = paste("R Help on `",
> > >                    topic, "'", sep = ""), delete.file = (zfile !=
> > >                    file), pager = pager)
> > >so everything is in the title. We could still paste the title and the
> > >header arguments rather than put the header in the displayed text, of
> > >course. 
> > 
> > Windows has
> > 
> >  file.show(zfile, title = "", header = paste("`", topic, "' help", 
> > 	sep=""), delete.file = (zfile!=file), pager = pager)
> > 
> > Probably I should change Windows to use title= instead of header=.
> > It'll make no difference to the behaviour with the standard Windows
> > pager, which combines the title and header.
> > 
> > I think tkpager should combine the title and header too, since it
> > shows each file in a separate window, but the change above would be
> > enough to solve the bug I reported.
> 
> Hmm... So would changing tkpager, and without having to change the
> documented API. So that would probably be a more straightforward
> solution. 
> 
> 

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595