[R-SIG-Mac] R 2.10.1, OSX 10.4.11, and maybe a firewall]]

[Carl Witthoft]

I changed the plist defaults per Simon's suggestion (below). Here's what 
I got:

Results:
web browser comes right up with the desired help page,  URL is
http://127.0.0.1:23285/library/base/html/assign.html  (for ?assign)

The R internal help page launches as well and remains blank.

If the "fuzzy logic" matching page comes up,  no action occurs in the 
web browser, i.e. no new page, no error, etc.

% library(help=BB) brings up the usual text window with the library info 
in R

The following links showed up in the R Package Manager window-- but I 
can't figure out how I made something show up there.  Clicking on them 
does nothing. Clicking on various installed package names in the upper 
half of the window does nothing.

http://127.0.0.1:19566/library/plotrix/html/00Index.html#Z
http://127.0.0.1:19566/doc/html/index.html

Then closing Package Mgr window and reopening left the bottom clear, 
can't reload anything into it.

And I briefly got the "help topics matching BB" to load, although links 
in the text in lower panel don't work.  The upper window doesn't respond 
to clicks on topics.
http://127.0.0.1:19566/library/BB/help/multiStart.

Note also that ??plotrix brought up matches for plotrix but did NOT 
clear or write anything in bottom panel; BBoptim was still shown there.

There are no browser or R console crash logs (which makes sense since 
neither app crashed or hung).

I don't know if this is relevant, but there is something a little bit 
wrong with my computer's MacOS Help app. If I open the help window from 
the Help menu, I generally get about its hyperlinks to work the first 5 
times or so.  If I ever try to click a second time on the "Index" link, 
nothing happens and no links work from then on.  Deleting the 
Helpviewer.plist file, quitting Help, and restarting Help gives me 
another 5 working links again..

I am beginning to fear a system reinstall is necessary. This will be 
painful because the firewall blocks "system update" so I'll have to find 
all the updaters manually.


Thanks again for all the suggestions and help.
Carl


-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Witthoft [mailto:carl at witthoft.com]
Sent: Sun 2010-01-17 4:09 PM
To: Witthoft, Carl G (AS); cellocgw at yahoo.com
Subject: [Fwd: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] R 2.10.1,  OSX 10.4.11, and maybe a firewall]



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] R 2.10.1,  OSX 10.4.11, and maybe a firewall
Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:14:13 -0500
From: Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org>

One of the issues is that the built-in browsers don't show errors. So
one way to go about this is to enable the external browser (in Terminal):

defaults write org.R-project.R use.external.help YES

Then use the help and see what it says. To revert back to the built0in
help, you can use
defaults delete org.R-project.R use.external.help

Cheers,
Simon