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finding things in R manuals

10 messages · David Winsemius, Berend Hasselman, Duncan Murdoch +3 more

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Dear list,

Would it be possible to include the pdf versions of the R manuals in the 
CRAN mac R install? I find them easier to global search than html ones. 
(I am used to having them on Windows.)

Regards,

Ruth
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On Feb 2, 2012, at 2:37 PM, Ruth Ripley wrote:

            
I generally copy the link to the html and paste them into my browser.  
The search in the default GUI-invoked help panel doesn't handle  
punctuation or revisions to searches at all well. The text get  
overwritten in the bottom entry slot and I don't think the search- 
revisions actually occur.
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT
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I prefer Adobe reader's directory search. But I don't have the 
up-to-date set of pdf manuals on my computer. I can do an easy global 
search of the html manuals with text wrangler but I then have to read 
html. I am thinking I will have to start building my own R just to get 
the ability to build the manual pdf's.

Ruth
On 03/02/2012 01:14, David Winsemius wrote:

  
    
#
On 03-02-2012, at 12:37, Ruth Ripley wrote:

            
I don't think you have to do that. I also like using the pdf manuals for browsing/searching/...

I recently built the pdf manuals for R-2.14.1. I have attached two scripts that did it for me.

The setup script prepares the R build system.
The make-R-pdf script just makes the pdf manuals and copies them to the current directory.
Both these scripts should placed in the directory where you have unpacked R sources (R-2.14.1.tar.gz).

Comments and improvements welcome.

Berend

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On 12-02-03 6:37 AM, Ruth Ripley wrote:
They are also available for download from CRAN, though you won't get the 
Mac OSX FAQ.  See the "Documentation" link on the left.

I forget whether there's a way to add items to the menu, but you can 
certainly write a function to pick one and open it, e.g.

doc <- function(manual=file.choose()) {
   system(paste('open', manual))
}

Duncan Murdoch
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If you have multiple versions of R installed it is really convenient 
that they contain the appropriate manuals.  I have an archive back to 
2.0.0 (and a few before) that I consult surprisingly often.

Our dept builds for Linux have always done 'make install install-pdf', 
and I think the argument that binary distributions of R should contain 
all the useful pieces is strong now space does not matter.

The Windows team have decided to simplify their installer for 2.15.0 
and always install all the documentation and tests, so the only 
choices will be 32-bit, 64-bit or both.
On Fri, 3 Feb 2012, Berend Hasselman wrote:

            

  
    
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Thanks for the scripts, Berend. With one or two amendments they ran 
successfully (my compilers have -4.2 attached to their names). But it 
did seem rather a lot of work (on the part of my computer). After 
Duncan's response, I decided it might be easier to write an R script 
using download.file to get them from CRAN. My R is much better than my 
shell script.

Ruth
On 03/02/2012 11:54, Berend Hasselman wrote:
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On Feb 2, 2012, at 2:37 PM, Ruth Ripley wrote:

            
Since we are in the phase of adding things to the distribution anyway it is certainly trivial to add the pdf manuals so I shall do that.

Personally, I prefer nightly builds of the R-devel manuals in html, so I use http://r.research.att.com/man/

Thanks,
Simon
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Many thanks, Simon. Also to the other respondents for their suggestions.

The link for the nightly builds will also be useful, once I have found 
out which manual I need by searching the pdf's.

Ruth
On 03/02/2012 14:33, Simon Urbanek wrote:

  
    
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On Feb 3, 2012, at 10:35 AM, Ruth Ripley wrote:

            
Sure, you're welcome.

While I'm thinking about this, I have also added the nightly PDF manuals to the webpage as well as the Mac FAQ (in html).

Best,
Simon