[R] help with help()

[Erik Iverson]

claudia tebaldi wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> Just this morning I upgraded to R 2.12.0  (for Mac OS X 10.6.4).
> All went well until I needed to run a help() or help.search() in my session,
> which I'm running within Emacs (ESS 5.3.7).

That's very old version of ESS, I have no problems with 2.12.0 with ESS
5.11 on Emacs 23.2 at home.

Also, there is an ESS-help mailing list for ESS questions, usually
very responsive and all the developers read it.

> Say I need help with the command 'density'. When I type
> 
> help(density)
> or
> ?density
> 
> the ESS help buffer opens, it is titled *help[R](density)* but it contains
> only a couple of lines saying, e.g.,
> 
> Error in help("density", htmlhelp = FALSE) :
>   unused argument(s) (htmlhelp = FALSE)
> 
> This is a problem only running R within emacs. The command help() works fine
> if I run R at the command line in  a terminal window or if I use the
> stand-alone R application.
> 
> Thank you in advance
> 
> Claudia
>