[R] help went away from top emacs window :-(

[Duncan Murdoch]

Thanks for looking into this.

On 11/3/2006 9:53 AM, Richard M. Heiberger wrote:
> I located what might be the problem.  There is a different misbehavior
> with Gnu emacs.  I don't have Xemacs.  I have an idea how to fix it but
> haven't worked out the details.
> 
> 
> ess-inf.el in the lines
> (defconst inferior-R-1-input-help (format "^ *help *(%s)" ess-help-arg-regexp))
> (defconst inferior-R-2-input-help (format "^ *\\? *%s" ess-help-arg-regexp))
> (defconst inferior-R-page	  (format "^ *page *(%s)" ess-help-arg-regexp))
> 
> detects help requests from the commandline in the *R* buffer and redirects
> their output to an emacs *help[R] (whatever)* buffer.
> 
> In gnu emacs on windows, with options(chmhelp=TRUE), the effect is an empty
> *help[R] (whatever)* buffer.  What I think happened is that ESS trapped the
> request and created the buffer, then R never got the right content to send
> to that buffer because R thinks that chm is handling it.
> 
> The fix probably requires ESS to check the value of the chmhelp option
> and suppress the interception of help requests if the option has the value
> TRUE.  ESS also needs to monitor if that option has been changed.  This might
> mean that ESS always intercepts help requests and checks the value of the option
> each time.

You should also look at options("htmlhelp") - a user might have chosen 
that style.

Duncan