new help pages in R 2.10.0
On Fri, 6 Nov 2009, Robert Baer wrote:
Robert Baer wrote:
I think the html based one works fine (even if I definitely preferred the old chtml). Only another comment: I chose html in my installation with Windows Vista, but still the help pages are opened in text files in the newly installed version.
The nice thing about the chtml that is missing from html is the "table of contents" frame on the left. Oh well!
But you do have the 'Index' link at the bottom of every page. Works for me. Just takes a little getting used to.
Thanks for pointing it out. Astoundingly, I missed this link with my old eyes <G>. Not quite the same as having a panel, but now its about user interface and not functionality, so I'm much happier. In future versions, it would be nice if this <index> link at least forced a new browser tab when clicked. Likewise, it would be nice if links on the "index page" did not write over the index. The goal would be to allow content to be viewed "more or less" simultaneously with the index information. The other question is whether there is a way to start the httpd help server in the background during the R startup sequence. The first call to help during an R session seems to incur a delay which I'm guessing is spent connecting to localhost and starting the httpd server.
I think you should collect some data rather than guess.
Has anyone discovered any tricks to make the httpd help engine start-up more seemless?
Well, the delays for me are very small. People are reporting delays in starting the browser, especially on Windows. (I find Chrome starts there faster than Firefox or IE8, but I mainly use Firefox on Linux.) Starting the server is down by tools::startDynamicHelp(). And on my MacBook Air:
system.time(tools::startDynamicHelp())
starting httpd help server ... done
user system elapsed
0.019 0.002 0.021
and in a new session
system.time(help.start())
starting httpd help server ... done
If '/usr/bin/open' is already running, it is *not* restarted, and you
must switch to its window.
Otherwise, be patient ...
user system elapsed
0.022 0.007 0.035
and the page is up in Firefox faster than I can time.
On my early 2005 vintage Windows XP laptop (slow by today's
standards):
system.time(tools::startDynamicHelp())
starting httpd help server ... done
user system elapsed
0.05 0.02 0.25
and
system.time(tools::startDynamicHelp())
starting httpd help server ... done
user system elapsed
0.05 0.02 0.25
with a web page shown in Firefox 3.5.4 in 3 seconds. (It does help to
have run Firefox recently in the Windows session.)
There is no known problem with the speeds of R's components, so if you
are not seeing comparable times you need to get your system
investigated.
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595