Skip to content

Firefox keyword searches for R & S-Plus

4 messages · Kevin Wright, Romain Francois

Original
Kevin Wright
# 
If you've 'rediscovered the web' with Firefox (http://getfirefox.com), you
might find this tip handy.  Suppose you want to search the (local) R
documentation for information about the lme function.  Wouldn't it be nice
to just type into the browser address bar:
  r lme
and have the search performed?  Here's how (on Windows):

Click on this link: 
file:///C:/Progra~1/rw2000/doc/html/search/SearchObject.html?%s

Bookmark the page and name the bookmark something like: R 2.0.0 doc search

Edit the properties of the bookmark (by right-clicking on the bookmark)
and in the keywords field enter: r

Click OK.


That's all there is to it except for a couple of notes:

1. The first time the local search is performed (during a browser
session), the java search applet has to be loaded.  This takes several
seconds.

2. If you use a different operating system, a different version of R, or
install R in a different location, change the bookmark path to the
"SearchObject" file as appropriate.

3. By default this only searches Help page titles.  You may prefer a more
comprehensive search that includes Keywords and Object names.  Edit the
SearchObject.html file and change 'false' to 'true' in the following line:
  line = line + document.SearchEngine.search (searchstring,true,true,true);



Here are my R and S-Plus bookmarks.  I'll just give the link, my bookmark
name, and my bookmark keyword.

http://www.google.com/u/newcastlemaths?q=%s
R mail archive search
rh

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.biostat.wustl.edu+[S]+%s
S-news archive search
sn

file:///C:/Progra~1/rw2000/doc/html/search/SearchObject.html?%s
R 2.0.0 doc search
r


Happy searching!

Kevin Wright
Romain Francois
# 
Hello Kevin,

That's a good idea to use the functionnality of firefox to search for 
help in R.
I wonder if that is possible to perform the search in the searchplugins 
(like google), I tried to but there is always the characters %20= that 
messed up with the one I was actually looking at.
Maybe something I don't see well, I created the following file in my 
C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/searchplugins directory (just copying 
the google one)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
# Mozilla/R plug-in by francoisromain at free.fr

<search 
   name="R"
   description="R search engine"
   method="GET"
   action="file:///C:/Program%20Files/R/rw2000/doc/html/search/SearchObject.html"
<input name=" " user>

<interpret 
    browserResultType="result" 
    charset = "UTF-8"
    resultListStart="<!--a-->" 
    resultListEnd="<!--z-->" 
    resultItemStart="<!--m-->" 
    resultItemEnd="<!--n-->"
</search>
_______________________________________________________________________________________________


Any idea ?
Sorry for my english.

Romain.

kwright at eskimo.com a ??crit :

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Kevin Wright
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Nice idea.  A couple of comments.

1. I personally always install R in c:/R/ instead of c:/Program Files/
There are frequently comments on R-help that it is better to avoid paths
with spaces.  Still, you should be able to use /Progra~1/ instead of
/Program Files/

2. The search engine plugin that you have created generates a URL like this:
.../SearchObject.html?q=nlme

What is needed is a URL like
.../SearchObject.html?%s
where the %s is the string from the text box.

I speculate it might be possible to change the SearchObject.html file to
grab the "q=nlme" and strip off the "q=" but I have no idea if this is
possible.

I'm not comfortable with HTML/Java/Javascript to get this working properly.

3. My comment about editing the SearchObject.html file to change the
"false" to "true" doesn't seem to cause the search to match the results
obtained using the traditional way of opening the search page and typing
in the text.
I'm not sure why.  Would love it if someone figured this out.

Seems like all of this would be fairly easy for a good web programmer.

Kevin

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Romain Francois
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Dear wizaRds, Kevin,

I came up with a solution to perform a r doc search in the Firefox 
search bar, you'll have to create a file called R.src in the search 
plugins directory  : (for me it is : C:/Program Files/Mozilla 
Firefox/searchplugins) and  put a png image of the R logo in the same 
directory (the logo has to be named R.png) : same prefix as the .src file.

My R.src file looks like that:

# Mozilla/R plug-in by francoisromain at free.fr

<search 
   name="R"
   description="R search engine"
   method="GET"
   action="file:///C:/Program%20Files/R/rw2000/doc/html/search/SearchObject.html"

            

      
      
      
    

        
<input name="SEARCHTERM" user>

<interpret 
    browserResultType="result" 
    charset = "UTF-8"
    resultListStart="<!--a-->" 
    resultListEnd="<!--z-->" 
    resultItemStart="<!--m-->" 
    resultItemEnd="<!--n-->"

            

      
      
      
    

        
</search>
#end of file


With only that the problem is that Firefox is calling the page

file:///C:/Program%20Files/R/rw2000/doc/html/search/SearchObject.html?_SEARCHTERM=_glm

if I want entries about glm. So the response is that

"No matches for " SEARCHTERM=glm " have been found 



I looked at several searchplugins but I think we can't get rid of the 
"SEARCHTERM=".

Then, I changed the searchObject.html file to remove that part of the 
searchstring, just after the commentary //call the applet code!, I just 
add that :

if(searchstring.length > 10 & searchstring.substring(0,10) == 'SEARCHTERM') { 
       searchstring = searchstring.substring(11,searchstring.length) ;
}



That works fine for me except that I don't get as much entries as the 
searchPluging.html gives : any ideas ?

Hope that will be helpfull for somebody else.

Romain.

            

      
      
      
    

        
_              
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch     i386           
os       mingw32        
system   i386, mingw32  
status                  
major    2              
minor    0.0            
year     2004           
month    10             
day      04             
language R 




kwright at eskimo.com a ??crit :