[R-pkg-devel] Public URLs for help for versions of base packages

[Duncan Murdoch]

R includes the tools::Rd2HTML function to convert Rd source files to 
HTML for display.  RStudio offers previews of Rd pages; presumably they 
use those functions.  I imagine ESS does the same.

If you want to do it yourself, start with ?tools::Rd2HTML.

There have been changes to the specs over time, but I'd guess current R 
could render old Rd pages reasonably well, back to when Prof Ripley and 
I wrote Rd2HTML in R 2.9.0.  Before that, it was done by a Perl script, 
and the Rd syntax had more differences; I think the parser would likely 
die on those very old files.

Duncan Murdoch

On 29/06/2023 8:01 p.m., Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> Sure. On your computer. Install the old version of R and let it serve the relevant docs.
> 
> Dunno of anyone doing this historical dive online for you though. Why would you want preformatted docs if you didn't have those old versions installed?
> 
> On June 29, 2023 4:23:55 PM PDT, David Hugh-Jones <davidhughjones using gmail.com> wrote:
>> That’s useful to know. But is there anywhere with preformatted HTML pages?
>>
>> Cheers, D
>>
>> On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 at 21:46, Ivan Krylov <krylov.r00t using gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 20:22:47 +0100
>>> David Hugh-Jones <davidhughjones using gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm looking for a source of online help for R base
>>>> packages, which covers all versions (for some reasonable value of
>>>> "all"). So e.g. the equivalent of `?lm` for R 4.1.0.
>>>
>>> These live in the R source tree, under src/library:
>>> https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/
>>>
>>> For the actual releases of R, you may have to go looking at the
>>> branches inside that repository, e.g., the following command:
>>>
>>> svn log \
>>>
>>> https://svn.r-project.org/R/branches/R-4-1-branch/src/library/stats/man/lm.Rd
>>>
>>> ...should tell you the history of ?lm until the latest R-4.1-patched.
>>>
>>> Do the Git mirrors track these release branches? The branching model of
>>> Subversion [*] is different from the Git model, so perhaps not.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Best regards,
>>> Ivan
>>>
>>> [*] https://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.branchmerge.using.html
>>>
>