[R-SIG-Mac] http requests in help window blocked as insecure

[Simon Urbanek]

> On Jul 6, 2017, at 11:41 PM, BATES Timothy <tim.bates at ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> fyi, clicking on an http:// link in a help window (say a manual pdf) yields a deprecation warning now, so too does cmd+
> 
> starting httpd help server ... done
> 2017-07-06 22:27:11.219 R[33716:3185341] -deltaZ is deprecated for NSEventTypeMagnify.  Please use -magnification.
> 2017-07-06 22:30:46.726 R[33716:3190570] App Transport Security has blocked a cleartext HTTP (http://) resource load since it is insecure. Temporary exceptions can be configured via your app's Info.plist file.
> 

Yes, for security reasons Apple doesn't allow http anymore - that's a system-wide setting. We use an exception for R help itself, but anything other than our help is not allowed and has to use SSL.


> PS: I am getting the freezeing behavior others have mentioned if dumping something big into the console, like a dataframe
> 

As noted this seems to be regression in macOS Sierra and Xcode 8.3, unfortunately. AFAICS it is an issue in the system/compiler and not in the GUI itself. I'll try to see if there is a a work-around we could use.

Thanks,
Simon