[R] Building static HTML help pages in R 2.10.x on Windows

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> On 07/01/2010 9:05 AM, Michael Friendly wrote:
>>
>> Michal Kulich wrote:
>> > On 7.1.2010 9:49, Dieter Menne wrote:
>> > > I am sorry to say that the new dynamic help is a HUGE nuisance to me.
>> > > Had to revert back to R 2.9 because of that :-(.
>> > > Michal
>>
>> I too have reverted to 2.9.2 on Win XP because I find html help to be far
>> less convenient than the compiled CHM help I had before. CHM help is
>> so much easier because the Contents, Index and Search panels make it easy
>> to *see* all the items defined for a package, and I get a separate help
>> window for each package.
>> I very much appreciate the efforts of the R-core team to move R forward,
>> but I think the change in help is a step back.
>>
>
> You can see the items for the package on the index page for the package,
> which is linked from every page.
>
> You can put together a package that displays the help in your favourite
> format, if you don't like the default format.  There's nothing that we used
> in CHM help that couldn't be duplicated in Javascript, without the security
> holes.
>
> I see it as more important that R core enables others to do what they want,
> rather than to maintain ancient designs.

Perhaps the link to the Index could be placed at both the top and
bottom rather than just at the bottom since its a nuisance to have to
scroll down and its less noticeable at the bottom as its typically off
the screen.