[R-sig-Fedora] Scrolling in Help System Doesn't Work

[Marc Schwartz]

On Aug 5, 2011, at 10:08 AM, Tom Callaway wrote:

> On 08/05/2011 10:40 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
>> UsRs,
>> 
>> When accessing help by typing, for example,
>>> ?read.table
>> the up and down keys do no longer scroll the help page. The page-up and
>> page-down keys also do not work any longer. I can scroll down by
>> pressing the d key, but I cannot scroll up by pressing the b key
>> (although it should work according to the text displayed when you press
>> the h key).
>> 
>> I'm not sure whether this question is Fedora-specific, but since this
>> list is most close to my configuration I first would like to know if
>> this can be replicated (or maybe I'm missing something obvious).
> 
> By default, R uses "more" as a pager. You can see this by looking at /usr/lib[64]/R/etc/Renviron, specifically, the "PAGER" variable. If you wanted to switch to a pager that supports up-down scrolling, switch it to /usr/bin/less.
> 
> ~tom


Just to add to Tom's reply, if you would prefer to use HTML help pages and view them in a browser, you can put:

  options(help_type="html")

in your ~/.Rprofile

See ?options and ?help

Regards,

Marc Schwartz