Building static HTML help pages in R 2.10.x on Windows
On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
On 07/01/2010 9:05 AM, Michael Friendly wrote:
Michal Kulich wrote:
On 7.1.2010 9:49, Dieter Menne wrote:
I am sorry to say that the new dynamic help is a HUGE nuisance to me. Had to revert back to R 2.9 because of that :-(. Michal
I too have reverted to 2.9.2 on Win XP because I find html help to be far less convenient than the compiled CHM help I had before. CHM help is so much easier because the Contents, Index and Search panels make it easy to *see* all the items defined for a package, and I get a separate help window for each package. I very much appreciate the efforts of the R-core team to move R forward, but I think the change in help is a step back.
You can see the items for the package on the index page for the package, which is linked from every page. You can put together a package that displays the help in your favourite format, if you don't like the default format. ?There's nothing that we used in CHM help that couldn't be duplicated in Javascript, without the security holes. I see it as more important that R core enables others to do what they want, rather than to maintain ancient designs.
Perhaps the link to the Index could be placed at both the top and bottom rather than just at the bottom since its a nuisance to have to scroll down and its less noticeable at the bottom as its typically off the screen.