[Rd] options("quit.with.no.save"), and Windows installer changes

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 7/4/2006 11:57 AM, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>>> "Duncan" == Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>
>>>>>>>     on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 08:32:08 -0400 writes:
>>     Duncan> I've just committed a couple of changes to R-devel related to requests 
>>     Duncan> at userR about the Windows installer.  The first of these affects all 
>>     Duncan> platforms, but I've only tested it on Windows:
>>
>>     Duncan> I added an option "quit.with.no.save".  If TRUE,
>>     Duncan> then the default q("ask") prompt will not offer to
>>     Duncan> save the workspace.  This is in response to the
>>     Duncan> observation that new users who are instructed not to
>>     Duncan> save their workspace, get confused when they
>>     Duncan> accidentally answer Yes to the prompt to save it.
>>
>> Ok...  but I probably misunderstand a bit:
>>
>> The default has not been   q(save = "ask") but  q(save = "default"),
>> and that default has depended on startup.
>>
>> Even now, "R --no-save"  already did have the desired effect,
>> on Unix at least.  For my ESS setup, I have made this an automatic
>> default many months ago.
>>
>> Wouldn't it be easier and sufficient to make "--no-save" a
>> working option on all platforms ?
>> Or is the point really about changing the quitting dialog?
>> For me quitting *without* a dialog is the most important thing
>> which I use (often several times a day).
>>
>>     Duncan> I'm not sure about the wording of the user prompt
>>     Duncan> question, which is now "Quit and discard
>>     Duncan> workspace?".  The problem with this wording is that
>>     Duncan> someone who automatically hits "y" will lose their
>>     Duncan> work.  I've tried on Windows to make the dialog box
>>     Duncan> look different enough that they should be warned.
>>
>> good!
>>
>>     Duncan> I haven't made any change to the Mac GUI to support this.  On 
>>     Duncan> Unix-alikes, the text prompt should respect this option.
>>
>>     Duncan> The other change is to the Windows installer, to
>>     Duncan> allow the user to choose whether to set
>>     Duncan> quit.with.no.save, MDI/SDI display, and help style
>>     Duncan> at install time.  The only (intentional) change to
>>     Duncan> the current behaviour is to default to CHM help
>>     Duncan> instead of plain text.
>>
>> People have asked me in private about this, and I didn't know
>> the answer:
>> Is it true that this means that people can no longer commit the
>> "cheap package install trick" on Windows for  R-code-only
>> packages?
>> Namely
>>   1) install a source package on a Linux/Unix/MacOSX machine
>>      (where it is often simple to have all the necessary tools available)
>>   2) zip the resulting installed package
>>   3) unzip it on the target Windows machine into the corresponding
>>      library (directory).
>>
>> Of course, this trick will not provide any *.chm help files.
>> Will the cheap-installed package still work, using the *.txt (or
>> *.html) help files?
> 
> 
> 
> Well, the user has to ask
>     help(topic, chmhelp = FALSE)
> in this case, or (s)he get the message:
> 
>               No CHM help for 'foo' in package 'pkg' is available:
>       the CHM file for the package is missing
> 
> Perhaps it is possible to arrange some fallback to plain text help if 
> chmhelp is not available: in print.help_files_with_topic call print() on 
> the "help_files_with_topic" object again, but change attribute "type" to 
> "help" before that call ...

Yes, that seems to work.  I'll add that.

Duncan Murdoch