[R] HTML help pages

[Frank E Harrell Jr]

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:11:33 +0000 (GMT)
Damon Wischik <djw1005 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> 
> On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> > Did you check the rw-FAQ?  It says
> >  If the help search system does not work _at all_, this probably
> >  indicates that Java support is either not installed or not enabled in
> >  your browser.  Recent versions of browsers have made Java support
> >  optional: for example it is optional in Netscape 6/7 and in Opera,
> >  and may not be installed for IE6 on Windows XP.  You also need
> >  JavaScript enabled.
> 
> I might add one can test if Java support is installed+enabled by going
> to
>   http://www.java.com/en/download/help/testvm.jsp
> This is Sun's java test page.
> 
> My situation is that Java support is installed+enabled, but R help is
> still not working. This indicates some issue to do with the
> Javascript/Java interface. It might be paranoid security settings,
> though I've turned of all the security options I can find.
> 
> Is there anyone running Mozilla Firebird 0.6 or 0.7 on Debian 3.0 who
> has got HTML searching to work?

mozilla-firebird on Debian 3 does not work for me by default, even with
java and javascript activated.  I've always wondered whether there is a
way to implement this without java since the java approach has caused so
many problems for users and it seems to entail some overhead.

I routinely do options(browser='dillo'); help.start(); ?functionname.  The
menus do not work but html help file displays are fine, and extremely
quick.

Frank

---
Frank E Harrell Jr   Professor and Chair           School of Medicine
                     Department of Biostatistics   Vanderbilt University