R help - Aug 2004 - Xemacs do not want to execute help.start() with R1.9.1

Hi all,
I 've just reinstalled from the scratch my Windows 2000 (Italian version)
on a formatted HD, because I like to clean
the environment from time to time (say once a year).

I'm currently using XEmacs-21.4.13 and R (rw1091)
and Xemacs is configured as described in
http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Books/Companion/ESS/ess-xemacs.pdf

The problem is that the command
help.start()
added in the  c\Program Files\R\rw1091\etc\Rprofile
do not work and I receive from Xemacs at the startup the following two
lines:
????????????????????????????????????????????
Error: couldn't find function "help.start"
> options(STERM='iESS', editor='winclient.exe'> >
????????????????????????????????????????????
If I type
help.start()
in the upper as well as in the lower window,
the HTML help start in a new window.

This happened also before the reinstallation of the whole OS,
but it did not happened when I was running a previous R version (1.7.??)

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your time.

Ottorino
Univ Of Florence

This is really a question about .Rprofile and is becoming an FAQ.
The phenomenon you observe is due to the reorganization of the system
packages in R 1.9.x:  The base package had segments broken off into
new separate packages, e.g. utils, where help.start() can be found.

In the ``NEWS'' file can be found the following paragraph:

	Users may notice that code in .Rprofile is run with only the
	new base loaded and so functions may now not be found.  For
	example, ps.options(horizontal = TRUE) should be preceded by
	library(graphics) or called as graphics::ps.options or,
	better, set as a hook -- see ?setHook.

So you could get help.start() to work by invoking it as

	utils::help.start().


				cheers,

					Rolf Turner
					rolf at math.unb.ca

I've forwarded your question to the appropriate mailing list:
ESS-help, see http://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/ess-help/

Martin Maechler