[Rd] suppressing 'download.file' progress window

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Roger D. Peng wrote:

> In Windows, 'download.file' pops up a separate window indicating the 
> progress of the download (even when 'quiet = TRUE').  This is useful and 
> informative when downloading a single (large) file.  However, when 
> downloading multiple (smaller) files in sucession, the constant flashing 
> of the progress window can be a little disorienting (at least for me).
>
> Is there a way to suppress this progress window?  Or is it an operating system
> feature?

The write up was somewhat confusing.  'quiet=TRUE' suppresses the status 
messages on all platforms, and the (text) progress bar.  Only in R-devel 
does it suppress the progress bar widget on Windows.

That said, the main time I download many files is via update.packages() or 
install.packages(), and there was no provision to set quiet=TRUE from 
those: I've just added ... to allow that.

-- 
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