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

[Spencer Graves]

I concur:  Thanks very much for looking into this.  Spencer Graves

Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> 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