R devel - Dec 2009 - request to make --enable-prebuilt-html the default build on linux

I don't understand the advantages of generating html help dynamically,
but I have found some clear disadvantages.

One is that I can no longer use a bookmark in my browser to access the
list of packages and go from there to individual help pages.

The other is that, if I try to use ESS instead (using
options(help_type="html") in .Rprofile) - it is a mess.  ESS splits
the emacs frame (which then must be closed by hand) and opens a new
window (or at best a new tab) for every request, requiring these to be
closed too.

You could say that this is a problem with ESS, which is true, but,
again, I don't see the down side of having static html help pages.
(Maybe there is one.  But it certainly isn't disk space: all together
these take about as much of that as a couple of digital photos.)

Jon
-- 
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron

On 05/12/2009 4:36 PM, Jonathan Baron wrote:
> I don't understand the advantages of generating html help dynamically,
> but I have found some clear disadvantages.
> 
> One is that I can no longer use a bookmark in my browser to access the
> list of packages and go from there to individual help pages.
If you leave a copy of R running to serve them, you can.  Tell it to use 
a particular port (via options(help.ports=12345), for example) and then 
set your bookmark to work with that.
> 
> The other is that, if I try to use ESS instead (using
> options(help_type="html") in .Rprofile) - it is a mess.  ESS
splits
> the emacs frame (which then must be closed by hand) and opens a new
> window (or at best a new tab) for every request, requiring these to be
> closed too.
> 
> You could say that this is a problem with ESS, which is true, but,
Obviously that is a problem with ESS.  Why would it care at all where 
the HTML is coming from???

Duncan Murdoch
> again, I don't see the down side of having static html help pages.
> (Maybe there is one.  But it certainly isn't disk space: all together
> these take about as much of that as a couple of digital photos.)
> 
> Jon