R SIG Debian - Nov 2007 - separate window for help/newbie

hi,
is there a way to make r open the help file in a separate window?
i'm quite new to linux(kubuntu) and used to work with r under windows...
thanks,
katharina

Katharina,

On 12 November 2007 at 23:50, Katharina Manderscheid wrote:
| is there a way to make r open the help file in a separate window?

How did you start R?  In a terminal window like xterm, konsole, ... ?

| i'm quite new to linux(kubuntu) and used to work with r under windows...

A few things come to mind:

i)   Cheap:  Just open another xterm, konsole, ... and run R there to
     invoke help()

ii)  Still cheap:  call    help.start()   to launch a browser, and look
     at the help via the browser

iii) Fancier: Try using Emacs and ESS, help will then be in another buffer

iv)  Alternatively:  Use another program as the pager via the PAGER 
     environment variable, or via options()

v)   Harder: Use JGR, but that is not trivial to set up, though it is 
     possible on Debian and Ubuntu.

Cheers, Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.

Hi again,

On 13 November 2007 at 21:45, Katharina Manderscheid wrote:
| sorry, i need further assistance:
| i thought it would be nice to use Kate as texteditor which opens help.

Yes, many people like that editor. 

| but if i try
| options("pager"="Kate")
| and then
| options("pager")
| i get
| $pager
| [1] "Kate"
| but when i try the help
| help(help)
| i get
| sh: Kate not found

Well, "Kate" != "kate", start with

	options("pager"="kate")

However, you seem to assume that because you can edit with kate, kate should
also be able to 'receive' help files for display.  I am not sure if that
is
true as I am not really a kate user-- if I were you, I'd try kate as an
editor, but use Johannes' suggestion (from below) of getting help into
konqueror.

Hope this helps, Dirk


| so i suppose (don't laugh, as i said, i'm linux-newbie), i have to put
| in something else for kate to open...
| thanks,
| katharina
| 
| 
| Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
| > On 13 November 2007 at 19:26, Adrian Dusa wrote:
| > | However, it still does not seem to work for me :(
| > [...]
| > | Then I created .Rprofile (in both /usr/lib/R/etc/ and /etc/R/) with 
| >
| > ( Redundant, should be the same file by virtue of symbolic links. )
| >
| > | options("pager"="kfmclient newTab")
| > | 
| > | but still the same result.
| > | It is like Konqueror doesn't know where to look for the help files,
so it only
| > | displays my home folder instead.
| > | 
| > | The strange thing is, even though I modified both Renviron and
.Rprofile, when
| > | starting R the option for pager looks like:
| > | > options("pager")
| > | $pager
| > | [1] "/usr/lib/R/bin/pager"
| > | 
| > | This feature seems to be useful and I'd like to enable it. Should I
check
| > | anything else in the configuration file?
| >
| > As per   help(Startup)   the site-global file is Rprofile.site, not
| > .Rprofile.
| >
| > Also note how it tells you 
| >
| > 	 do not change '$R_HOME/etc/Renviron' itself
| >
| > Renviron is, AFAIK, a reflection of compile-time settings.  
| >
| > Things have always worked fine for me with the either the ~/.Rprofile and
| > ~/.Renviron files, or their *.site variants below /etc.  
| >
| > Hope this helps,  Dirk
| >
| >   

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.