[R-SIG-Mac] bypassing the R.app help browser?

[Marc Schwartz]

Hi John,

Happy to help. I recalled seeing something previously on this, so a search using rseek.org was fruitful.

The potential gotcha, of course, is if for some reason the GUI exits in a manner possibly not under your control. The setting would not be returned to the default and the therefore, as you note, retained for a subsequent session where the behavior may not be desired.

If this is for Rcmdr, perhaps this is something that could be added to a menu, where the user can alter the behavior in either direction as desired, if that makes sense.

Simon would need to comment on the potential for alternatives.

Best regards,

Marc


On Aug 12, 2014, at 3:46 PM, John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca> wrote:

> Hi Marc,
> 
> Thanks for this. It does work, and I wasn't aware of it -- you've obviously
> done a better job than I did of searching for a solution!
> 
> Although this approach works, it has the disadvantage of permanently
> changing the help browser in R.app, beyond the current session, at least
> until the change is explicitly undone. I think that I can work around that
> by something like
> 
> 	current <- system("defaults read org.R-project.R", intern=TRUE)
> 
> to discover whether the use.external.help preference exists, and if so, what
> its value is; to then set the preference to YES if it's NO or unset; and
> finally to remove the preference on exit.
> 
> Again, thanks -- I think that I can work with this, though it would in my
> opinion be better if the help browser were settable for the current session
> directly via options() in R, or if one could specify the browser in a call
> to help().
> 
> Best (and thanks again),
> John
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Marc Schwartz [mailto:marc_schwartz at me.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2014 4:04 PM
>> To: John Fox
>> Cc: r-sig-mac at r-project.org
>> Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] bypassing the R.app help browser?
>> 
>> On Aug 12, 2014, at 2:33 PM, John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear list members,
>>> 
>>> Is there a way to bypass the R.app help browser, and to use instead
>> an alternative browser, such as the one pointed to by
>> getOption("browser")?
>>> 
>>> I've tried a number of strategies, including setting .Platform$GUI <-
>> "unknown". The only approach I tried that works is to mask the help()
>> function with a modified version, but this produces other problems,
>> such as referencing unexported objects from utils and tools.
>>> 
>>> It would be nice if the help() function had a browser argument,
>> similar to that in browseURL(), and defaulting to the current
>> behaviour.
>>> 
>>> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>>> 
>>> John
>> 
>> 
>> John,
>> 
>> I found this post from Simon that seems to work:
>> 
>>  https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-mac/2009-December/006908.html
>> 
>> I tried it on my Mac in the latest version of R.app, which I normally
>> do not use and the help system does now popup a browser.
>> 
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Marc Schwartz
>