[R] how to change default help settings from factory default html

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 14 Jun 2010, Katya Mauff wrote:

> Hi all
>
> Apologies if this is a trivial question- I have searched the lists 
> and the online help files etc but have not managed to find anything. 
> I recently downloaded the latest version of R, which has the help 
> type set to htmlhelp as default (according to 
> http://127.0.0.1:18380/library/utils/html/help.html)

Not so for the latest R (2.11.1) compiled with the default settings. 
The help(help) page in 2.11.1 actually says

      The ‘factory-fresh’ default is text help except from the Mac OS
      GUI, which uses HTML help displayed in its own browser window.

However, the Windows installer allows you to set the default type of 
help, and its default is HTML help in R >= 2.10.0.

> I would very much like to be able to access the help files when I am 
> offline by typing ?topic etc as I used to with the previous R 
> version. Any suggestions?

You should be able to use HTML help offline: it is running locally on 
your machine (127.0.0.1 is the loopback interface).  (It is 
conceivable that your unstated OS disables the loopback interface when 
'offline', but we have not come across an instance of this.)

But ?help tells you how select other forms of help by default via

           help_type = getOption("help_type"))

and ?'?' says

      This is a shortcut to ‘help’ and uses its default type of help.


>
> Thanks
> Katya
>
>
>
>
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-- 
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