More help problems with ESS on Windows

[Ross Boylan]

?update.packages
get me an empty buffer while running R 2.8.1 under Emacs and ESS from
Vincent Goulet's emacs-23.1-modified-3.exe (ess 5.5).  I'm on Windows
XP.

Last week I reported (to ess-help only) that I couldn't get help on S4
functions.  I recall that I could, at the time, get help on things in
the utils package.

This is odd, because update.packages is in utils, and this
week ?setMethod works fine.

Furthermore, if I launch R help from the Windows start menu, I can
navigate to help on update.packages by going through the utils package.

I also tried ?utils::update.packages, with the same lack of results.

I hear R 2.10 is out; maybe I should try an R upgrade.

Ross Boylan

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[Ross Boylan]

On Wed, 2009-10-28 at 13:45 -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
>
> I hear R 2.10 is out; maybe I should try an R upgrade.
Help with 2.10 seems to work properly.  However, it is extraordinarily
slow the first time it displays a help page (not just the first
page--all new pages).  I assume that this stems from pages being built
dynamically in the new scheme, but maybe it is my anti-virus program
(which keeps popping up alerts because a program is suspiciously
launching IE).  I did not see much CPU use, which weighs a bit against
the first interpretation.

In addition to the html help window, emacs displays a help window (e.g.
*help[R](install.packages)* with:
Warning message:
In help("install.packages", htmlhelp = TRUE) :
  htmhelp = TRUE is deprecated: use help_type ="html"

(That was a transcription.)

Asking for help on different topics opens up new tabs; asking again for
help does not open a new tab (which is good), nor does it bring the
relevant tab to the front (which would be nice).

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[Marc Schwartz-3]

On Oct 28, 2009, at 4:25 PM, Ross Boylan wrote:

> On Wed, 2009-10-28 at 13:45 -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
>>
>> I hear R 2.10 is out; maybe I should try an R upgrade.
> Help with 2.10 seems to work properly.  However, it is extraordinarily
> slow the first time it displays a help page (not just the first
> page--all new pages).  I assume that this stems from pages being built
> dynamically in the new scheme, but maybe it is my anti-virus program
> (which keeps popping up alerts because a program is suspiciously
> launching IE).  I did not see much CPU use, which weighs a bit against
> the first interpretation.
>
> In addition to the html help window, emacs displays a help window  
> (e.g.
> *help[R](install.packages)* with:
> Warning message:
> In help("install.packages", htmlhelp = TRUE) :
>  htmhelp = TRUE is deprecated: use help_type ="html"
>
> (That was a transcription.)
>
> Asking for help on different topics opens up new tabs; asking again  
> for
> help does not open a new tab (which is good), nor does it bring the
> relevant tab to the front (which would be nice).

Ross,

I suspect that the delay on your 2.10.0 system is due to your virus  
checker.  On OSX, using Emacs 23 and HTML help going to Safari, the  
help page comes up in the browser in a fraction of a second.

The tabbed behavior is typically something that is adjusted in the  
browser settings. I don't use IE of course, but for Safari on OSX, new  
help pages come up in new tabs, not new windows, and the new tab is  
focused. With Safari, if I use a sequence of:

?plot
?lm
?plot

The first opens a new tab, the second opens a new tab and the third  
brings the first tab for plot to focus.

Also, you need to adjust the setting in your .Rprofile for HTML help to:

   options(help_type="html")

HTH,

Marc Schwartz

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