help.start {utils}R Documentation

Hypertext Documentation

Description

Start the hypertext (currently HTML) version of R's online documentation.

Usage

help.start(gui = "irrelevant", browser = getOption("browser"),
           remote = NULL, searchEngine = FALSE)

Arguments

gui just for compatibility with S-PLUS.
browser the name of the program to be used as hypertext browser. It should be in the PATH, or a full path specified. Alternatively, it can be a function which will be called with an URL as its only argument.
remote A character giving a valid URL for the ‘R_HOME’ directory on a remote location.
searchEngine logical: if true go directly to the search engine page. A workaround for some Firefox 3 versions (see ‘Notes’).

Details

All the packages in the known library trees are linked to directory ‘.R’ in the per-session temporary directory. The links are re-made each time make.packages.html or help.start is run, which should be done after packages are installed, updated or removed.

A side effect is to set options(htmlhelp = TRUE) so that future help requests (by default) are sent to the browser.

If the browser named by the browser argument is different from the default browser as specified by options("browser"), the default is changed to the given browser so that it gets used for all future help requests. (This only holds when browser is a name, not a function.)

Note

There is a Java-based search facility available from the HTML page that help.start brings up. Should this not work, please consult the ‘R Installation and Administration’ manual which is linked from that page.

Note to users of Firefox 3.0 to 3.0.6: the search results have links that are resolved incorrectly by that browser if starting from the normal HTML index page. The workaround is to start with help.start(searchEngine = TRUE). This was fixed in Firefox 3.0.7.

See Also

help() for on- and off-line help in ASCII/Editor or PostScript format.

browseURL for how the help file is displayed.

RSiteSearch to access an on-line search of R resources.

Examples

## Not run: 
help.start()
## End(Not run)

[Package utils version 2.9.1 Index]