[R] [Rd] How to link to vignette from .Rd file

[Antonio, Fabio Di Narzo]

2006/11/8, Agner Fog <agner a agner.org>:
> Thanks for the tip. I had thought of using the demo facility for this
> but I didn't know how to check for the operating system.

See help about '.Platform'. I.e.,
> .Platform$OS.type
can be useful.

> This is a clumsy solution, but better than nothing. I agree with Duncan
> that there is a problem with the help system. It should either have a
> way to embed formulas and graphics in .chm files, or a way to use .pdf
> files for help under all operating systems. The latter solution is
> probably easier to implement.
>
> Unfortunately, I personally don't have the time to contribute to
> improving the help system of R. Maybe tasks like this could be offered
> as projects to university students. Many students are doing useless
> projects so why not use this resource for something useful.
>
> I have proposed to use R instead of Matlab for teaching math and signal
> analysis at my university college, but I am not teaching math myself so
> it's not my decision. If more universities were using R instead of
> Matlab, Mathcad, SAS, etc. then they would also be motivated to
> contribute to the development.
>
>
> Dominick Samperi wrote:
>
> > Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> >
> >> On 11/7/2006 8:51 AM, Agner Fog wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> I am building a package for various noncentral hypergeometric
> >>> distributions.
> >>>
> >>> I want to include some heavy mathematical formulas. It appears that
> >>> the build and INSTALL commands produce only .chm files and not .pdf
> >>> files from my .Rd files under Windows. This means that it cannot
> >>> show complicated mathematical formulas.
> >>>
> >>> The solution might be to include a .pdf file as a vignette. I tried
> >>> that, but I can't find any way to link to the .pdf file or access it
> >>> from any of the help facilities. The .pdf file is useless if the
> >>> user can't find it.
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> Yes, that's a major problem in the current R help system.  You can
> >> give the user code that would work to show the vignette, but there's
> >> no way to create a live link to it.
> >>
> >
> > The demo system can be used to compensate for limitations of the help
> > system.
> > You can display PDF files from any package subdirectory using a demo file
> > like this (named demo/ReadPkgDoc.R, and documented in demo/00Index):
> >
> > # ReadPkgDoc.R -- Displays a PDF file as a demo
> > #
> > isWindows <- (Sys.info()['sysname'] == 'Windows')
> > file <- system.file("doc", "PkgManual.pdf", package="PkgName")
> > if(isWindows) { # Windows automatically finds executable based on file
> > type.
> >  system(paste("CMD /C ", file, "\n"))
> > } else { # Change this to use path to Adobe reader if desired.
> >  system(paste("xpdf ", file, "\n"))
> > }
> >
> > To create the PDF file from the Rd file use R CMD Rd2dvi, and dvipdf.
> >
> > ds
> >
>
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