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Possible solution for Mozilla/help.start() search problems

6 messages · Marc Schwartz, Brian Ripley, jarrett@duke.edu +2 more

Original
Marc Schwartz
# 
I thought that I would post a follow up given the several posts on this
same subject in the past week. All R comments pertain to 1.6.1.

Earlier in the week using a development build of Mozilla under RH 8.0, I
was able to get the help.start() based search engine to work with both
Java and JavaScript enabled. This was using what I believed to be the
V1.2b branch of Mozilla, in which both Xft anti-aliasing font support
and Gtk2 support for RH 8.0 was included. There are RH 8.0 specific RPMS
located at:

http://komodo.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/experimental/gtk2/

Upon verifying the version number however, this branch turns out to be
V1.3a of Mozilla, not 1.2b. At least this is what it is identifying 
itself as. The build that worked was dated 2002-11-18.
I post this for the sake of clarification.

Late tonight, I updated my Mozilla installation with the latest build
from the same branch, which is dated 2002-11-22.  Sure enough, the
help.start() search engine is non-functional with this build.

I spent some time tonight going back through and installing the several
builds from this past week and the build dated 2002-11-20 does not work
either.  Going back to the build from 2002-11-18 the search engine does 
work.

The only common observation that I had made is that in the versions
where the engine does not work, the browser status line message 
indicating that the Java applet has started, does not appear.  It does 
appear in the version from 2002-11-18, where the engine functions as 
expected. Thus it would seem that there is something intrinsic in the 
differing Mozilla versions that is inhibiting the R Java applet from 
properly loading and starting.

I spent some time tonight on both the Sun and Mozilla sites reviewing
FAQ's and Bugzilla and noted a variety of open Java related issues.

However, I did find one clue in the Mozilla 1.2b Release Notes that 
seems to have worked and I now have the help.start() search engine 
working in the 2002-11-22 Mozilla 1.3a build. The note would suggest 
that the browser may have problems locating the required Java modules to 
load and start the applet.

The fix seems to be to create (as root) a symlink to the file:

/usr/java/JAVA_VERSION/plugin/i386/ns610/libjavaplugin_oji.so

in your active Mozilla plugins directory.

In the process of doing this, I noted that there were multiple Moz* 
directories in /usr/lib, given the updating that I have done since 
installing RH 8.0. There was no symlink in usr/lib/Mozilla-1.3a/plugins.

Upon adding the symlink, lo and behold the help.start() search engine 
worked. If I remove the symlink, it fails.

Thus it is possible that as folks update Mozilla and Java installations 
and the respective directory structures change from version to version, 
this may cause a problem for Mozilla in properly locating the Java 
modules required to run the R search engine.

The pertinent release notes for Mozilla 1.2b are located at:

http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.2b/#java

There are also comments there for Windows and similar comments are 
present in the release notes for earlier versions as well.

I though I would pass this on as a possible solution given the problems 
noted here of late.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz








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Brian Ripley
# 
Marc,

I think that is the clue.  I copied the Netscape installation of the Java
plugins into my Moz 1.2b installation.  For 1.1 I let Mozilla download
Java support.  The first works with R, the second did not.

Looks like _adding_ Java support to Mozilla is not setup correctly.
Thanks for your patience in looking into this.

Brian
On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Marc Schwartz wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Marc Schwartz
    

    

      
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ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Professor Ripley,

Glad to be of help and thank you for your kind comments.

In my review of the Sun and Mozilla sites, there appear to be common 
installation/update design issues that impact the proper functioning of 
the Java plugins and therefore the applets. There are many posts in 
Bugzilla, which lead me to think that a resolution to this may require a 
level of standardization and cooperation between the involved parties. 
There is a definite "chicken and egg" disposition that comes through in 
some of the posts.

One can reasonably argue however, that the burden would be on the 
browser folks, since Java is meant to be platform/application 
independent. If a browser module/plugin is required for a particular 
page, the browser should search for it and if not installed, request 
that it be installed and update it's links accordingly for subsequent 
use. It is this process that seems to escape Mozilla at present.

Of course, having the Java plugins themselves in a standardized (ie. 
non-version specific) location would be of immense help as well and save 
search time.

Near term, it may be appropriate to consider adding a note in 
?help.start, the R FAQ and/or perhaps on 
.../doc/html/search/SearchEngine.html to refer folks to the release 
notes/FAQ for their platform/browser combination as to any issues 
relevant to the proper functioning of the Java plugins and therefore the 
R search applet.

Given the plethora of combinations of OSs and browsers, it may be 
problematic to provide specific instructions that would be relevant to 
any particular R user. Though, it may be reasonable that Mozilla and its 
Gecko based derivatives are sufficiently prevalent within the R 
Community that providing detailed instructions in that case would be 
appropriate. I would defer to others on that.

Best regards,

Marc Schwartz

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1 day later

    

      
      

        


  

        

      jarrett@duke.edu
    

    

      
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Thanks for your time and effort on this Marc.  Unfortunately, Apple has
"integrated" Java into Mac OS X (Darwin) and, according to a tech at
Apple, I cannot simply get a new Java plug-in.  I must wait for an update
of OS X.  So much for Java being platform independent.  BTW, I've tried
Netscape 7, IE 5.2 (both OS X) and Mozilla 1.0 and Opera (version?) (both
Darwin), all with the same problem.  In the meantime, I'm using the
help.search() and help() combo.  However, I seem to recall reading some
place that an earlier version of Netscape (4.x?) has its own Java
component and, presumably, would not depend on an external plug-in.
If/when I decide to investigate this, I'll report accordingly.  Thanks
again!

jarrett

        
On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Marc Schwartz wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
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      Jan de Leeuw
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
I am not sure what "Java Plugin" you refer to. Updates to the OS X
versions of JSE and JDK are at the Apple Developer Connection,
the JDK is currently at 1.4.1 DP 5. It may be, however, that only
developers in the select program can get at the recent updates.

I did not follow this thread, but what precisely is the problem (on
Darwin) ?

        
On Monday, November 25, 2002, at 07:45 AM, jarrett at duke.edu wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
===
Jan de Leeuw; Professor and Chair, UCLA Department of Statistics;
Editor: Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Journal of Statistical  
Software
US mail: 9432 Boelter Hall, Box 951554, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1554
phone (310)-825-9550;  fax (310)-206-5658;  email: deleeuw at stat.ucla.edu
homepage: http://gifi.stat.ucla.edu
   
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      Dr Michael Waters
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Hi,

To (hopefully) save you time, I believe that direct java integration
stopped at Netscape 4.5, as evinced by the following link:

http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/open_java_v2rjs.
html

HTH

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:owner-r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of jarrett at duke.edu
Sent: 25 November 2002 15:45
To: Marc Schwartz
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch; york at noaa.gov; ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Subject: [R] Re: Possible solution for Mozilla/help.start() search
problems

Thanks for your time and effort on this Marc.  Unfortunately, Apple has
"integrated" Java into Mac OS X (Darwin) and, according to a tech at
Apple, I cannot simply get a new Java plug-in.  I must wait for an
update
of OS X.  So much for Java being platform independent.  BTW, I've tried
Netscape 7, IE 5.2 (both OS X) and Mozilla 1.0 and Opera (version?)
(both
Darwin), all with the same problem.  In the meantime, I'm using the
help.search() and help() combo.  However, I seem to recall reading some
place that an earlier version of Netscape (4.x?) has its own Java
component and, presumably, would not depend on an external plug-in.
If/when I decide to investigate this, I'll report accordingly.  Thanks
again!

jarrett

        
On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Marc Schwartz wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
this

            

      
      
      
    

        
I

            

      
      
      
    

        
RPMS

            

      
      
      
    

        
several

            

      
      
      
    

        
work

            

      
      
      
    

        
does

            

      
      
      
    

        
to

            

      
      
      
    

        
usr/lib/Mozilla-1.3a/plugins.

            

      
      
      
    

        
installations

            

      
      
      
    

        
version,

            

      
      
      
    

        
problems

            

      
      
      
    

        
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