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

[Johannes Ranke]

Hi again,

I just tried to use konqueror as a pager as well - it just opens showing
my home folder, as Adrian described. It might be because the help
contents are piped into the pager. Konqueror (and its alias kfmclient)
is not a pager, althought it is a lot of other things.

I suggest to use HTML help, at least if you happen to use KDE as a
desktop environment. Either you just issue the command help.start() from
within your R session, or you can make HTML help the default. I just
recalled that there is this R option, and I now have following lines in
my .Rprofile:

	options(htmlhelp=TRUE)
	options(browser="kfmclient newTab")

Cheers,

Johannes Ranke

* Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> [071114 00:20]:
> 
> Hi again,
> 
> On 13 November 2007 at 21:45, Katharina Manderscheid wrote:
> | sorry, i need further assistance:
> | i thought it would be nice to use Kate as texteditor which opens help.
> 
> Yes, many people like that editor. 
> 
> | but if i try
> | options("pager"="Kate")
> | and then
> | options("pager")
> | i get
> | $pager
> | [1] "Kate"
> | but when i try the help
> | help(help)
> | i get
> | sh: Kate not found
> 
> Well, "Kate" != "kate", start with
> 
> 	options("pager"="kate")
> 
> However, you seem to assume that because you can edit with kate, kate should
> also be able to 'receive' help files for display.  I am not sure if that is
> true as I am not really a kate user-- if I were you, I'd try kate as an
> editor, but use Johannes' suggestion (from below) of getting help into
> konqueror.
> 
> Hope this helps, Dirk
> 
> 
> | so i suppose (don't laugh, as i said, i'm linux-newbie), i have to put 
> | in something else for kate to open...
> | thanks,
> | katharina
> | 
> | 
> | Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> | > On 13 November 2007 at 19:26, Adrian Dusa wrote:
> | > | However, it still does not seem to work for me :(
> | > [...]
> | > | Then I created .Rprofile (in both /usr/lib/R/etc/ and /etc/R/) with 
> | >
> | > ( Redundant, should be the same file by virtue of symbolic links. )
> | >
> | > | options("pager"="kfmclient newTab")
> | > | 
> | > | but still the same result.
> | > | It is like Konqueror doesn't know where to look for the help files, so it only 
> | > | displays my home folder instead.
> | > | 
> | > | The strange thing is, even though I modified both Renviron and .Rprofile, when 
> | > | starting R the option for pager looks like:
> | > | > options("pager")
> | > | $pager
> | > | [1] "/usr/lib/R/bin/pager"
> | > | 
> | > | This feature seems to be useful and I'd like to enable it. Should I check 
> | > | anything else in the configuration file?
> | >
> | > As per   help(Startup)   the site-global file is Rprofile.site, not
> | > .Rprofile.
> | >
> | > Also note how it tells you 
> | >
> | > 	 do not change '$R_HOME/etc/Renviron' itself
> | >
> | > Renviron is, AFAIK, a reflection of compile-time settings.  
> | >
> | > Things have always worked fine for me with the either the ~/.Rprofile and
> | > ~/.Renviron files, or their *.site variants below /etc.  
> | >
> | > Hope this helps,  Dirk
> | >
> | >   
> 
> -- 
> Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.

-- 
Dr. Johannes Ranke                 jranke at uni-bremen.de     Key ID: F649AF90
UFT Bremen, Leobenerstr. 1         +49 421 218 63373
D-28359 Bremen                     http://www.uft.uni-bremen.de/chemie/ranke