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HTML help pages

7 messages · Devin Johnson, Damon Wischik, Frank E Harrell Jr +2 more

Devin Johnson
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I am having trouble getting the HTML help pages to work. When I try the 
search engine I get an error on page response and nothing happens. When 
I try to click on the listed topics nothing happens. I am using both 
Mozilla and IE6 on XP and the same thing happens on each. Is there 
something I'm missing?

Thanks
-Devin Johnson
Brian Ripley
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On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Devin Johnson wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Did you check the rw-FAQ?  It says

 If the help search system does not work _at all_, this probably
 indicates that Java support is either not installed or not enabled in
 your browser.  Recent versions of browsers have made Java support
 optional: for example it is optional in Netscape 6/7 and in Opera, and
 may not be installed for IE6 on Windows XP.  You also need JavaScript
 enabled.

Marc Schwartz has already given a comprehensive Linux-oriented answer.  
In my recent experience on Windows (and I have set up XP boxes three times
recently) it will work provided

Java is installed and enabled
No one has altered the default security settings.

It is unlikely that Mozilla has Java enabled unless you took steps to
install a Sun Java JRE.  You can configure XP to use the Sun JRE, (in `set
Program Access and Defaults' on the start menu) but it will expect to use
the Microsoft Java VM.

As Marc says, Mozilla (and Netscape and Firebird) will show `Applet
SearchEngine started' in the bottom left corner.  I didn't see such a
message in IE6.  On the box I am writing this on I have just checked IE6
(fully patched), Netscape 7.1, Mozilla 1.6 and MozillaFirebird 0.7: they 
all work.


My experience with Linux and Solaris is that they are much harder to set 
up, and only some JRE versions work with some browsers.  (For example, I 
had Netscape 7.01 and Mozilla 1.4 working, but 7.1 and 1.6 required a JRE 
upgrade and that did not then work with 7.01 and 1.4.  Next thing the 
link to the required JRE on Sun's site got broken ....)

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Damon Wischik
    

    

      
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On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
I might add one can test if Java support is installed+enabled by going to
  http://www.java.com/en/download/help/testvm.jsp
This is Sun's java test page.

My situation is that Java support is installed+enabled, but R help is
still not working. This indicates some issue to do with the
Javascript/Java interface. It might be paranoid security settings, though
I've turned of all the security options I can find.

Is there anyone running Mozilla Firebird 0.6 or 0.7 on Debian 3.0 who has
got HTML searching to work?

Damon.

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Frank E Harrell Jr
    

    

      
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On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:11:33 +0000 (GMT)

        
Damon Wischik <djw1005 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
mozilla-firebird on Debian 3 does not work for me by default, even with
java and javascript activated.  I've always wondered whether there is a
way to implement this without java since the java approach has caused so
many problems for users and it seems to entail some overhead.

I routinely do options(browser='dillo'); help.start(); ?functionname.  The
menus do not work but html help file displays are fine, and extremely
quick.

Frank

---
Frank E Harrell Jr   Professor and Chair           School of Medicine
                     Department of Biostatistics   Vanderbilt University

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Brian Ripley
    

    

      
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On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
Unfortunately, not that we have found.  What you can do with HTML in a
browser is limited.  We could either supply our own HTML-rendering widget,
or run our own HTTP server to talk to a standard browser.  Neither are
small enterprises.

It used not to cause many problems, and I think it rarely does on OSes
with Java support built-in.  There has been a rash of problems with
little-documented security changes and incorrect instructions.

My preferred option is to scale down people's expectations, and perhaps
say on the search page that this will only work if your system is set up
properly, but help.search() will always work.

How to manage help is one of a number of issues facing R (another is the 
introduction of UTF-8 locales and other internationalization issues) where 
a lot of work is needed that is not statistics and is of little benefit to 
developers.  They may not be deemed high enough priority.

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Damon Wischik
    

    

      
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On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
On my own pages, I've used Javascript for search rather than Java. You can
see how it works at
  http://www.wischik.com/damon/Recipe/index/search.html
The idea is to embed all of the index into the html page in XML-like
markup, and to have Javascript trawl through this list. Page download time
should be much the same (with the current R solution, the index file has
to be downloaded; with the Javascript, the index is downloaded as part of
the search page.) Searching will be a bit slower; whether that is
acceptable depends on the size of the index.

I'm glad to say I've finally got the searching to work in Mozilla Firebird
0.7. I think the problem is to do with this:
* Mozilla Firebird 0.7 requires Java 1.4 or later
* Java 1.4 from Sun does not properly support the Applet tag.

The solution (really a dirty non-standard hack), according to the Sun
documentation, is to use code like the following: 

<embed type="application/x-java-applet"
       code="SearchEngine.class"
       width="0" height="0"
       id="SearchEngine" 
       scriptable="true"
       INDEXFILE="index.txt">
</embed>

instead of the current

<applet
    code=SearchEngine.class
    name=SearchEngine
    width=0
    height=0 >
    <param name="INDEXFILE" value="index.txt">
</applet>

The official W3C position is that APPLET is deprecated in favour of
OBJECT, and EMBED is not even mentioned.

Damon.

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Patrick Connolly
    

    

      
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On Tue, 27-Jan-2004 at 01:26PM +0000, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

        
|> My preferred option is to scale down people's expectations, and
|> perhaps say on the search page that this will only work if your
|> system is set up properly, but help.search() will always work.

Java doesn't seem to present a problem with clunky old Netscape 4.7x
if anyone still has one hanging around.  That could be considered
scaling down expectations.

Simpler and more satisfactory, IMHO, is to use ? or C-c C-v in ESS
sometimes in conjunction with help.search().  Links to other help
files require a 'h' and <Enter>.  Does everything I need and I'm yet
to be convinced that's a scaling down.

Just in case anyone didn't know:  ESS is brilliant!

HTH