[Rd] Acessing pdf help files (PR#13419)

[Duncan Murdoch]

marcthibault at tanda.on.ca wrote:
> Full_Name: Marc Thibault
> Version: 2.8.1
> OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
> Submission from: (NULL) (216.104.125.106)
>
>
> I had Adobe Acrobat 5 and Adobe Reader 9 installed. The .pdf "open" association
> is to Reader. 
>
> When I selected "Help | Manuals(in pdf) | An Introduction to R", it brought up
> the file in Acrobat instead of Reader. After making sure the default
> associations were correctly pointing to Reader, I took the extreme step of
> uninstalling Acrobat. Now when I try the same thing, R responds with "Error:
> access to 'doc\manual\R-intro.pdf' denied." Outside of R, double clicking the
> file brings it up in Reader as it should. Asking for HTML help works fine, so
> access to doc\ hasn't really been lost.
>
> It seems that R picks up a reference to the pdf reader at installation time,
> doesn't do it right, and refuses to let go. On the other hand, reinstalling R
> didn't fix the problem.
>   

R uses the Windows ShellExecute function to "open" the file, so if 
that's not working, there's not much we can do about it.  You can see 
the association in the registry, probably under 
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document\shell\Open (though I don't have the 
same Acrobat versions as you, so I can't be sure). 

Duncan Murdoch