[Rd] Question on help system under windows

[Uwe Ligges]

Berwin A Turlach wrote:

> G'day all,
> 
> I spend today sometime playing around with R under Windows since our
> lecturing starts in 2 weeks again and our IT guys want to know which
> version to put onto our lab machines.
> 
> I noticed the following:
> 
> Under R-2.2.1, I obtain the following output:
>       > R.home()
>       [1] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\R-22~1.1"
> and if I run "help.start()" under R, I obtain a file "fixedHTMLlinks"
> in packages that are not installed in the standard library with entry:
>       file:///C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-22~1.1
> And the index help page of such a package is updated such that it has
> links like: 
>       file:///C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-22~1.1/doc/html/logo.jpg
> in it.  So this seems all to be fine.
> 
> However, when I install R-2.2.1 patched, I get the following output:
>       > R.home()
>       [1] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\R-22~1.1PA"
> and if I run "help.start()" under R, I obtain a file "fixedHTMLlinks"
> (needless to say, I deleted the previous file before running
> help.start) in packages that are not installed in the standard library
> with entry: 
>       file:///C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-22~1.1PA
> Which seems also correct.  However, the index help page of such a
> package, although its modification time was the time help.start() was
> run, still has links like:
>       file:///C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-22~1.1/doc/html/logo.jpg
> in it.  This, of course, stopped working when I un-installed R-2.2.1
> and only kept R-2.2.1 patched.  
> 
> Do I have a misconception of what help.start() is doing?  Or is this a
> bug?
> 
> Moreover, these machines still have R-2.2.0 installed, when I started
> R-2.2.0, I got the output:
>       > R.home()
>       [1] "C:\\PROGRA~1\\R\\R-22~1.0"
> and running help.start() creates "fixedHTMLlinks" with entry:
>       file:///C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-22~1.0
> Also, during my test the index help page of such a package was changed
> to have links like:
>       file:///C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-22~1.0/doc/html/logo.jpg
> 
> However, when I wanted to discuss these findings with our IT person
> (at which time I had deinstalled R-2.2.1 and R-2.2.1 patched),
> everytime we run help.start() from R-2.2.0, the modification dates of
> the html files changed, but the links were still of the type:
>      file:///C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-22~1.1/doc/html/logo.jpg
> So we were completely baffled why R-2.2.0 would write an R-2.2.1 link
> into these files. (???)
> 
> To make things more complicated, those packages are not only not in
> the standard library, but the library they are in is on another drive
> (the network drive).  We couldn't get compiled html help working for
> such packages at all under any of the recent versions of R.  I looked
> into the manuals, FAQ, RSiteSearch() &c for information about compiled
> help, but couldn't find anything that described how to get compiled
> help working for packages in a library that is on another drive than R
> is.  So our question is also whether this is possible?


For the latter, a recent patch from Microsoft has disabled the feature 
to display *framed* compiled html located on network drives.
According to Microsoft documentation you can re-enable it using the 
following registry setting - note that this a security issue!

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\HHRestrictions]
"EnableFrameNavigationInSafeMode"=dword:00000001


Uwe Ligges



> Thanks for any advice that you might be able to offer.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>         Berwin
> 
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