[Rd] Problem with Rcmdr Help menu under devel version of R 2.0.0

[Prof Brian Ripley]

You need to print the result of help.  From NEWS

    o	help() now returns information about available documentation for
	a given topic, and notifies about multiple matches.

and (unstated) does not print.

Brian

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004, John Fox wrote:

> Dear list members,
> 
> As an addendum to my previous message, Help buttons in Rcmdr dialogs --
> which generate calls to help() -- also fail to bring up corresponding help
> pages. 
> 
> Again, any assistance would be appreciated.
>  John 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: r-devel-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> > [mailto:r-devel-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of John Fox
> > Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004 10:53 PM
> > To: r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch
> > Subject: [Rd] Problem with Rcmdr Help menu under devel 
> > version of R 2.0.0 
> > 
> > Dear list members,
> > 
> > I've encountered the following problem with the Rcmdr Help 
> > menu in the development version of R 2.0.0 under Windows XP 
> > ("Version 2.0.0 Under development (unstable) (2004-08-20), 
> > ISBN 3-900051-00-3"):
> > 
> > The main Commander window has a (tcltk) Help menu with three 
> > items, "Commander help", "About Rcmdr", and "Introduction to 
> > the R Commander", which, in the development version of the 
> > Rcmdr package, call the following three functions:
> > 
> > helpCommander <- function() help("Commander")
> > 
> > helpAboutCommander <- function() help("aboutRcmdr")
> > 
> > browseManual <- function() {
> >     
> > browseURL(paste(file.path(.path.package(package="Rcmdr")[1], "doc"), 
> >         "/Getting-Started-with-the-Rcmdr.pdf", sep=""))
> >     }
> > 
> > (Of course, there are help pages for "Commander" and 
> > "aboutRcmdr" in the Rcmdr package).
> > 
> > These functions are not exported by the Rcmdr package, but as 
> > near as I can tell, that doesn't seem to be the source of the problem.
> > 
> > The third menu item works fine, but the other two [which 
> > contain calls to help()] appear to do nothing. I've tried 
> > several variations, including specifying the package argument 
> > to help() and using ? in place of help(), but to no avail. 
> > Curiously, calling, e.g., Rcmdr:::helpCommander() directly 
> > from the R command prompt works just fine.
> > 
> > Unrelated to the above, I've also encountered some MD5 
> > checksum problems with R 2.0.0 binary packages for Windows 
> > installed from CRAN:
> > 
> > ------------- output --------------------
> > 
> > files R/car have the wrong MD5 checksums files R/effects have 
> > the wrong MD5 checksums files R/multcomp have the wrong MD5 
> > checksums files R/relimp have the wrong MD5 checksums
> > 
> > -------------  end  ---------------------
> > 
> > Finally, there seems to be a dependency problem with the 
> > lmtest package Windows binary installed via the "Packages -> 
> > Install package(s) from CRAN"
> > menu in the R Console:
> >     
> > ------------- output --------------------
> > 
> > > local({a <- CRAN.packages()
> > + install.packages(select.list(a[,1],,TRUE), .libPaths()[1], 
> > + available=a,
> > dependencies=TRUE)})
> > trying URL 
> > `http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.0/PACKAGES'
> > Content type `text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1' length 18348 
> > bytes opened URL downloaded 17Kb
> > 
> > also installing the dependencies 'sandwich', 'zoo', 'strucchange'
> > 
> > trying URL
> > `http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.0/sandwich_0.1-3.zip'
> > Content type `application/zip' length 75982 bytes opened URL 
> > downloaded 74Kb
> > 
> > trying URL 
> > `http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.0/zoo_0.2-0.zip'
> > Content type `application/zip' length 53003 bytes opened URL 
> > downloaded 51Kb
> > 
> > trying URL
> > `http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.0/strucchange
> _1.2-4.zip'
> > Error in download.file(url, destfile, method, mode = "wb") : 
> >         cannot open URL
> > `http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.0/strucchange
> _1.2-4.zip'
> > In addition: Warning message: 
> > cannot open: HTTP status was `404 Not Found' 
> > > 
> > 
> > -------------  end  ---------------------
> > 
> > 
> > Any help would be appreciated, particularly with the problem 
> > I'm experiencing with the Rcmdr Help menu.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> >  John
> > 
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 
> 

-- 
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