[R] Re: Possible solution for Mozilla/help.start() search problems

ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Sat, 23 Nov 2002 08:25:12 -0000

Marc,

I think that is the clue.  I copied the Netscape installation of the Java
plugins into my Moz 1.2b installation.  For 1.1 I let Mozilla download
Java support.  The first works with R, the second did not.

Looks like _adding_ Java support to Mozilla is not setup correctly.
Thanks for your patience in looking into this.

Brian

On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Marc Schwartz wrote:

> I thought that I would post a follow up given the several posts on this
> same subject in the past week. All R comments pertain to 1.6.1.
>
> Earlier in the week using a development build of Mozilla under RH 8.0, I
> was able to get the help.start() based search engine to work with both
> Java and JavaScript enabled. This was using what I believed to be the
> V1.2b branch of Mozilla, in which both Xft anti-aliasing font support
> and Gtk2 support for RH 8.0 was included. There are RH 8.0 specific RPMS
> located at:
>
> http://komodo.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/experimental/gtk2/
>
> Upon verifying the version number however, this branch turns out to be
> V1.3a of Mozilla, not 1.2b. At least this is what it is identifying
> itself as. The build that worked was dated 2002-11-18.
> I post this for the sake of clarification.
>
> Late tonight, I updated my Mozilla installation with the latest build
> from the same branch, which is dated 2002-11-22.  Sure enough, the
> help.start() search engine is non-functional with this build.
>
> I spent some time tonight going back through and installing the several
> builds from this past week and the build dated 2002-11-20 does not work
> either.  Going back to the build from 2002-11-18 the search engine does
> work.
>
> The only common observation that I had made is that in the versions
> where the engine does not work, the browser status line message
> indicating that the Java applet has started, does not appear.  It does
> appear in the version from 2002-11-18, where the engine functions as
> expected. Thus it would seem that there is something intrinsic in the
> differing Mozilla versions that is inhibiting the R Java applet from
> properly loading and starting.
>
> I spent some time tonight on both the Sun and Mozilla sites reviewing
> FAQ's and Bugzilla and noted a variety of open Java related issues.
>
> However, I did find one clue in the Mozilla 1.2b Release Notes that
> seems to have worked and I now have the help.start() search engine
> working in the 2002-11-22 Mozilla 1.3a build. The note would suggest
> that the browser may have problems locating the required Java modules to
> load and start the applet.
>
> The fix seems to be to create (as root) a symlink to the file:
>
> /usr/java/JAVA_VERSION/plugin/i386/ns610/libjavaplugin_oji.so
>
> in your active Mozilla plugins directory.
>
> In the process of doing this, I noted that there were multiple Moz*
> directories in /usr/lib, given the updating that I have done since
> installing RH 8.0. There was no symlink in usr/lib/Mozilla-1.3a/plugins.
>
> Upon adding the symlink, lo and behold the help.start() search engine
> worked. If I remove the symlink, it fails.
>
> Thus it is possible that as folks update Mozilla and Java installations
> and the respective directory structures change from version to version,
> this may cause a problem for Mozilla in properly locating the Java
> modules required to run the R search engine.
>
> The pertinent release notes for Mozilla 1.2b are located at:
>
> http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.2b/#java
>
> There are also comments there for Windows and similar comments are
> present in the release notes for earlier versions as well.
>
> I though I would pass this on as a possible solution given the problems
> noted here of late.
>
> HTH,
>
> Marc Schwartz
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595