[R-SIG-Mac] help.start() and Safari etc

[David Firth]

Well, here's a kind of answer to my own question.

Instead of making a link to /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/index.html, 
help.start() can *copy* that file to the per-session temporary 
directory.  Then all works fine with /usr/bin/open as the browser 
option in R.

In case anyone is interested, my amended help.start function can be 
found at
http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~firth/Rstuff/help.start.R

David

On Wednesday, Jul 16, 2003, at 10:24 Europe/London, David Firth wrote:

> I have
>
> > options("browser")
> $browser
> [1] "/usr/bin/open"
>
> and my default HTML browser in OS X is Safari (but it could be Omniweb 
> or IE or whatever).
>
> Problem: doing help.start() opens page
>   file:///usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/index.html
> AND it causes
>   file:///usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/
> to be the root for relative URLs from that page.  As a consequence the 
> "Packages" link goes to the wrong page: it should go to the 
> packages.html file in the per-session temporary directory, not the one 
> in /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/.
>
> The problem seems to be that /usr/bin/open follows rather slavishly 
> the links set up in the per-session directory: for example, when my R 
> session makes temporary directory Rtmp536,
> david% cd  /tmp/Rtmp536/.R/doc/html
> david% ls -l
> total 64
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 david    wheel          31 Jul 16 08:45 R.css -> 
> /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/R.css
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 david    wheel          36 Jul 16 08:45 about.html -> 
> /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/about.html
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 david    wheel          34 Jul 16 08:45 faq.html -> 
> /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/faq.html
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 david    wheel          39 Jul 16 08:45 function.html 
> -> /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/function.html
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 david    wheel          36 Jul 16 08:45 index.html -> 
> /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/index.html
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 david    wheel          34 Jul 16 08:45 left.jpg -> 
> /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/left.jpg
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 david    wheel          34 Jul 16 08:45 logo.jpg -> 
> /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/logo.jpg
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 david    wheel          36 Jul 16 08:45 logosm.jpg -> 
> /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/logosm.jpg
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 david    wheel          44 Jul 16 08:45 
> packages-head.html -> /usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/packages-head.html
> -rw-r--r--   1 david    wheel        6208 Jul 16 08:45 packages.html
> etc
>
> I can't see a way around this using /usr/bin/open.
>
> What would be useful is a command-line executable, say 
> /usr/local/bin/safari, such that
> david% safari /tmp/Rtmp536/.R/doc/html/index.html
> works in much the same way as does
> david% lynx /tmp/Rtmp536/.R/doc/html/index.html
> i.e., it displays the material at 
> file:///usr/local/lib/R/doc/html/index.html but keeps as the root for 
> relative URLs the temporary directory file:///tmp/Rtmp536/.R/doc/html
>
> But I don't know how to make such a "safari" script or other 
> executable.  Any suggestions?
>
> The same problem seems to occur with other browsers such as IE and 
> Omniweb.
>
> Regards,
> David
>
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-Mac mailing list
> R-SIG-Mac at stat.math.ethz.ch
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>