R devel - Jan 2001 - would like to configure help.start() point to a http:// style url rather than ~/.R/doc etc (fwd)

In our situation we sometimes run netscape from a another platform via ssh
and so the machine netscape is running on may not contain any R software,
or more precisely the user home account on the machine running
netscape is different from the account they initiated R and
so having netscape look into there home directory will NOT work.

It would desirable to have easy way to specificy a documentation root which
is an actual URL. Is there a place I can specify such a documentation
root in the configuration file? (NOTE. I am running 1.0.0 so perhaps
this has been updated?)

Failing the configuration approach, it would seem some kind
of patch to the file ./src/library/base/R/unix/help.start.R

would be necessary? Anyone have a suggestion? I wouldn't
mind learning a little about scheme (i think this is the language
the file is written in?)


-walter

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Walter Tautz <wtautz@math.uwaterloo.ca> writes:
> In our situation we sometimes run netscape from a another platform via ssh
> and so the machine netscape is running on may not contain any R software,
> or more precisely the user home account on the machine running
> netscape is different from the account they initiated R and
> so having netscape look into there home directory will NOT work.
> 
> It would desirable to have easy way to specificy a documentation root which
> is an actual URL. Is there a place I can specify such a documentation
> root in the configuration file? (NOTE. I am running 1.0.0 so perhaps
> this has been updated?)
> 
> Failing the configuration approach, it would seem some kind
> of patch to the file ./src/library/base/R/unix/help.start.R
> 
> would be necessary? Anyone have a suggestion? I wouldn't
> mind learning a little about scheme (i think this is the language
> the file is written in?)
Eh? help.start.R is written in R... However, since it's mostly
paste()ing together shell commands it may come across as something
from another language.

There's a remote= argument that you can pass to help.start [try
help.start(remote="http://stat.ethz.ch/R-alpha/")] , but it
doesn't solve the whole issue, e.g. a subsequent help(help) command
will cause a warning:

Using non-linked HTML file: style sheet and hyperlinks may be incorrect in:
help(help)

and proceed to try and get

file:/usr/local/lib/R/library/base/html/help.html

rather than something relative to the remote tree. 

I would seem that some of this stuff could do with a little redesign,
so suggestions are welcome. (The idea of having ~/.R is also
problematic if two R sessions for the same user both want to do
help.start())

Notice that using a remote documentation tree is going to lose you
some of the functionality that is normally present in the system: The
set of libraries available to a user may partly sit in his or her home
directory and the .lib.loc vector specifies which locations to search
for libraries. So it's not just a matter of specifying a document
root. 


-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
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