[R-sig-Debian] separate window for help/newbie

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Adrian,

On 13 November 2007 at 18:32, Adrian Dusa wrote:
| Dear Johannes,
| 
| On Tuesday 13 November 2007, Johannes Ranke wrote:
| > [...]
| > if you have the line
| >
| > 	options("browser"="kfmclient newTab")
| >
| > in your .Rprofile, you will have a tabbed help browser at now extra
| > cost after calling help.start() :)
| 
| There is an option for browser in Renviron (R-2.6.0 under Kubuntu):
| R_BROWSER=${R_BROWSER-'sensible-browser'}

Yes, that is a compile-time default I set given that Debian / Ubuntu have the
usual 'default' of the sensible-brower wrapper.   What Johannes does is to
simply override this choice to something he likes better.
 
| I tried changing "sensible-browser" to "kfmclient newTab", but it does not 
| perform anything different (it does not open Konqueror in a new tab).
| I even tried creating .Rprofile, but I cannot replicate your outcome.
|
| In R (restarted), typing ?somefunction will still present the help in the 
| terminal...

I suspect you misunderstood this:  "browser" is for the web browser, and only
affects help.start() et al.  What you are looking for is 

	options("pager") 

as that is used to 'page' the help output.  And I just tried this, so if you do

	options("pager"="kfmclient newTab")

any subsequent call for help will go to Konqueror and R even makes that explicit:

   > ?help
   Help for $B!F(Bhelp$B!G(B is shown in browser kfmclient newTab ...
   Use
           help("help", htmlhelp = FALSE)
   or
          options(htmlhelp = FALSE)
   to revert.

And this is of course more general than what Johannes said: It'll work
whereever Konqueror is installed, and not just on Kubuntu.  [ Or so I hope,
my test right now was done under Kubuntu Gutsy. ]

Hope this helps,  Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.