[R-SIG-Mac] 2.10.0 beta help functions

[Duncan Murdoch]

Peter Cowan wrote:
> I just installed the nightly from r.research.att.com called "R 2.10.0
> beta (2009-10-13)" for leopard using the pkg installer.
>
> When I use ?plot or help(plot) the help window opens, but is blank.
> And, I get this warning:
>
>   
>> ?plot
>>     
> Warning message:
> In help("plot", package = NULL) :
>   htmhelp = TRUE is deprecated: use help_type ="html"
>
> I know the help system has changed significantly in 2.10.0 and I
> apologize if it is poor form to report errors such as this while the
> still in the beta phase, but my reliance on these help functions has
> prevented me from continuing to use the beta and test other changes.
>
> BTW thank you for the option, in the new installer, to only install
> the 64bit GUI version.

I can confirm the problem in a current download, which labels itself as 
2.10.0 alpha (2009-10-08 r49995), R for Mac OS X GUI 1.30-devel Leopard 
build 32-bit.

You can get to the help system by running help.start(), but internal 
requests like ?plot will still go to the internal browser, which isn't 
working.  You can work around the bug by deleting the "AQUA" section of 
utils:::print.help_files_with_topic, e.g. by doing as follows:

print.help_files_with_topic <- utils:::print.help_files_with_topic

and then deleting the lines

    if (.Platform$GUI == "AQUA") {
        .Internal(aqua.custom.print("help-files", x))
        return(invisible(x))
    }

from your copy of print.help_files_with_topic.

One other problem with the installer:  by default it installed both 32 
and 64 bit versions, but R wouldn't start until I re-installed without 
the 64 bit version.  I'm using Leopard 10.5.8 on an old Intel Core Duo 
Macbook.  Can the installer detect that 64 bit executables are not 
supported, and not install it?

Duncan Murdoch