[Rd] two help problems in R-2.0.0 for Windows (PR#7269)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de wrote:

> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>Well, for htmlhelp, there is another error. The browser (e.g. Mozilla 
> >>1.7.3) tries to open "T:\R\library\stats\html/Normal.html" and has 
> >>problems with different kinds of slashes (/ vs. \).
> > 
> > 
> > I can't reproduce that.  I get forward slashes only. Can you track down 
> > where the \ are coming from?
> 
> 
> Brian,
> 
> you are right, in the object "file", there are only forward slashes.
> Looks like Mozilla (1.7.3) cannot interpret 
> "T:/R/library/stats/html/Normal.html" and it changes the string in its 
> navigation bar to: "T:\R\library\stats\html/Normal.html"
> 
> Specifying "file:///T:/R/library/stats/html/Normal.html" works, but the 
> "file:///" part seems to be required if using forward slashes.
> 
> Note that the fix to use
> chartr("/", "\\", file)
> is also used in help.start(). I guess there was a reason to include it.

One reason was not to confuse human readers, who get a message containing 
the file path.

It seemed strange that Mozilla 1.7.3 fails whereas Firefox succeeds (and 
even IE6 succeeds).  So I installed Mozilla to find out, and it does work 
for me (Windows XP SP2).  So it's something to do with your system vs 
mine, not different browsers.

I think I need to do some more extensive tests to decide if the right fix 
is to use a filespec with \ or a file:// URL.  One problem about the 
latter is that some browser used to require : replaced by | -- I think it 
was Netscape4 but I don't know if it is relevant.


> >>  options(chmhelp=FALSE, htmlhelp=TRUE)
> >>  ?dnorm  # does not work!
> >>
> >>
> >>This can be fixed by changing line 4 in
> >>.../src/library/utils/R/windows/help.R
> >>as follows:
> >>
> >>-    browseURL(file)
> >>+    browseURL(chartr("/", "\\", file))
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>AArrrrrgh, I've never used non-text help pages in the developer releases 
> >>... and obviously nobody else ...
> > 
> > 
> > Well, I have and Firefox works properly, for example.  I've not used
> > Mozilla recently as Firefox seems rather better.  I also checked, and IE6
> > works too.  Do you have a browser set (options(browser=)), or are you
> > relying on file associations?
> 
> The latter.
> 
> > Since this is to be a file:// URL, I believe forward slashes are correct, 
> > but we are at the mercy of Windows browser providers.
> 
> See above. The line
>      browseURL(paste("file://", file, sep="/"))
> works for me.
> 
> Uwe
> 
> 
> > Brian
> >
> 
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> 
> 

-- 
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