[R] Building static HTML help pages in R 2.10.x on Windows

[Michal Kulich]

On 7.1.2010 20:22, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> A more useful example than ls() would be methods().   I think it
> would be nice to have a list of methods included in the man page for
> a generic function, and links to their pages if they have their own
> man pages.  You might want to list all installed methods, with some
> sort of highlighting to indicate which ones are already attached, or
> perhaps be able to toggle between installed and attached, or
> whatever.  None of that is possible with static help, not even a list
> of installed methods, because someone might install a new package
> that offers some others after the static help has already been built.
> 
I see. Well, I never lacked any of these capabilities... Please understand that people who use R to do their work may have different objectives than the developers - and they form the majority of R users. 

> On 07/01/2010 2:16 PM, Kevin Wright wrote:

>> Well, among other things, if my global environment becomes 
>> cluttered/corrupt/etc and I quit R, then restart R, the links in my
>>  browser are now dead.

> You weren't following Dieter's instructions, then.

Indeed, but that option is not documented, as far as I know - at least not in 2.10.0. And even if it was, most users would not be able to find it or use it because they have no clue what a port is. 
 
>> I have to close all the tabs and call help to open them again.
>> Also, the R-supplied java tool for searching help is ancient and 
>> underwhelming.
 
> Then contribute a new one.

Duncan, if even the quite advanced and computer-proficient users have trouble using the dynamic R help and have to resort to some quite complex and cumbersome home-made solutions to get back the basic functionality then something is not right. It's true that the help system was never a particular strength of R and that it needed an overhaul. What worked well in the late 90's with a few dozen packages does not work well with >1000 packages. However, 2.10.x does not seem to make things better.

The work of the R developers should be widely appreciated and we really do appreciate it. The question is whether their effort is extended in the best direction... (Imho, that's an issue with most open-source projects and it's been much worse with Mozilla than with R).

Just my 2c.

Michal

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michal Kulich, PhD
Dept. of Probability and Statistics
Charles University
Sokolovska 83
186 75 Praha 8
Czech Republic
Email: kulich at karlin.mff.cuni.cz