[R] help.start() has a faulty link

[peter dalgaard]

On 31 Aug 2014, at 18:19 , Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

> On 31/08/2014 12:31, Rui Barradas wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> With 'help.start()' an HTML browser interface to help pops up.
>> In the section 'Miscellaneous Material' if you click on 'User Manuals'
>> an error occurs:
>> 
>> Error in vignettes[i, "PDF"] : subscript out of bounds
>> 
>> Is this a bug? A missing link?
> 
> We have very little idea: you have not told us the 'at a minumum' information required in the posting guide.
> 
> But it works for me in R 3.1.1: most likely there is a bug in the way you installed R (whatever that was ...).  For example, maybe you did not install the vignette PDFs ....

I see it with a default (I think) install of 3.0.2 on OSX (haven't gotten around to upgrading the laptop). Oddly, the Vignettes entry on the Help menu works fine, but the User Manuals entry in the R Help window produces the error. Vignettes installed or not, it doesn't sound like the right message to get. 

Poking around: Following

debug(tools:::makeVignetteTable)

I see

debug: Outfile <- vignettes[i, "PDF"]
Browse[2]> i
[1] 1
Browse[2]> vignettes
      Package                     
File  "utils" "Sweave.Rnw"        
Title "utils" "Sweave User Manual"
PDF   "utils" "Sweave.pdf"        
R     "utils" "Sweave.R"          
Browse[2]> str(vignettes)
 chr [1:4, 1:2] "utils" "utils" "utils" "utils" "Sweave.Rnw" ...
 - attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
  ..$ : chr [1:4] "File" "Title" "PDF" "R"
  ..$ : chr [1:2] "Package" ""

which looks like something is up with the construction of the "vignettes" table. Presumably, it wants to be  N x 5 with column names  "Package" "File" "Title" "PDF" "R", right?

(Followups should likely go to r-devel rather than r-help.)

-pd

> 
>> 
>> Rui Barradas
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> -- 
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford
> 1 South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG, UK
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com