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R CMD check "HTML version of manual" NOTE/Warnings

6 messages · Brian Ripley, Peter Dalgaard, John Fox

#
Dear R-sig-mac list members,

When checking packages --as-cran with R 4.2.0 (and R 4.2.0 patched), I'm 
seeing multiple warnings (and a NOTE) concerning the HTML version of the 
package help-page manuals. The warning appears for every .Rd file in all 
of the packages that I've checked. I didn't see this problem before R 
4.2.0.

I'm writing to the r-sig-mac list rather than r-package-devel because I 
don't encounter the same problem under Windows. Nor does it appear on 
the CRAN check pages for the packages.

I know that there's been discussion of adding an HTML manual, which 
seems a good idea, but I didn't realize that this has apparently already 
been implemented.

Has anyone else experienced this problem or does anyone understand its 
source? AFAIK, there's nothing unusual about the R installation on my 
Mac, but of course there may be some setting that inadvertently turned 
on checking the HTML manual.

Here's an example (with many lines elided, . . .):

------ snip ------

Johns-MacBook-Pro:car johnfox$ R CMD check --as-cran car_3.0-13.tar.gz
* using log directory 
'/Users/johnfox/Documents/R-package-sources/car/car.Rcheck'
* using R version 4.2.0 Patched (2022-04-24 r82246)
* using platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20 (64-bit)
* using session charset: UTF-8
* using option '--as-cran'
* checking for file 'car/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
* this is package 'car' version '3.0-13'
* checking CRAN incoming feasibility ... Note_to_CRAN_maintainers
Maintainer: 'John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca>'
* checking package namespace information ... OK

. . .

* checking PDF version of manual ... OK
* checking HTML version of manual ... NOTE
Found the following problems:
Anova.Rd:4:1: Warning: <link> inserting "type" attribute
Anova.Rd:12:1: Warning: <script> proprietary attribute "onload"
Anova.Rd:12:1: Warning: <script> inserting "type" attribute
Anova.Rd:17:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute
Anova.Rd:135:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute
Anova.Rd:285:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute
Boot.Rd:4:1: Warning: <link> inserting "type" attribute
Boot.Rd:12:1: Warning: <script> proprietary attribute "onload"
Boot.Rd:12:1: Warning: <script> inserting "type" attribute
Boot.Rd:17:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute
Boot.Rd:56:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute

. . .

which.names.Rd:12:1: Warning: <script> proprietary attribute "onload"
which.names.Rd:12:1: Warning: <script> inserting "type" attribute
which.names.Rd:17:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute
which.names.Rd:44:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute
* checking for non-standard things in the check directory ... OK
* checking for detritus in the temp directory ... OK
* DONE

Status: 1 NOTE
See
   '/Users/johnfox/Documents/R-package-sources/car/car.Rcheck/00check.log'
for details.

------ snip ------

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
  John
#
On 25/04/2022 20:04, John Fox wrote:
Unfortunately the authors of this are not on r-sig-mac.
This check is only done if you have 'tidy' on the path.  My Monterey M1 
MBP has

auk2% tidy --version
HTML Tidy for Mac OS X released on 31 October 2006 - Apple Inc. build 2649

I think that is far too old.  The short answer is to ignore these, or 
update tidy (from http://binaries.html-tidy.org/) which (5.8.0) finds 
different issues for car that I do not see on Fedora (with 5.7.16).

Probably your Windows machine does not have tidy installed.
--as-cran turned it on ((f tidy is available).

  
    
#
Dear Brian,

Thank you very much for the explanation. Please see interline below:
On 2022-04-25 4:51 p.m., Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
Should I mention this as well on r-package-devel?
That's exactly the version installed on my MacBook Pro. Is this standard 
for Monterey? If not, would it be best simply to remove tidy (and how 
did it get there?).
I saw these warnings for every .Rd file in all of the packages I 
checked, not just for the car package. The HTML is presumably generated 
from the .Rd files by the R installation process. If tidy is general, or 
common, on Monterey Macs, I wonder why others aren't reporting similar 
warnings on R CMD check --as-cran.
Again, thank you for the explanation.

Best,
  John
#
Yes, I think this should go to r-package-devel or maybe even file a bug report against "R CMD check". Looks like we "just" need to revise the logic at the start of check_Rd2HTML():

    check_Rd2HTML <- function(pkgdir) {
        if(!nzchar(Sys.which("tidy")) ||
           !startsWith(system2("tidy", "--version", stdout = TRUE),
                       "HTML Tidy"))
            return()

to either 

- look for a version number (which the Apple builds don't have) 
- explicitly reject the 2006 Apple builds
- somehow allow for an override using an environment variable

or thereabouts...

- pd

  
    
#
On 26/04/2022 15:43, peter dalgaard wrote:
This is switched on by _R_CHECK_RD_VALIDATE_RD2HTML_=true or --as-cran. 
  I plan to at least let _R_CHECK_RD_VALIDATE_RD2HTML_=false override 
--as-cran.

There seems to have been a report on r-package-devel not mentioning macOS:

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-package-devel/2022q1/007804.html
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-package-devel/2022q2/007932.html

but I don't think anyone had a clue that the macOS 'tidy' might be 
insufficient.

  
    
#
Dear Brian and Peter,

As Brian mentioned, I still get warnings (though different ones) from 
the updated tidy. For example, for the car package:

------ snip -------

* checking HTML version of manual ... NOTE
Found the following problems:
Anova.Rd:4:1: Warning: <link> inserting "type" attribute
Anova.Rd:12:1: Warning: <script> proprietary attribute "onload"
Anova.Rd:12:1: Warning: <script> inserting "type" attribute
Anova.Rd:17:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute
Anova.Rd:135:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute
Anova.Rd:285:1: Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute

------ snip -------

As before, these warnings are generated for all of the .Rd files in the 
package.

I'm cc'ing the r-package-devel list (with apologies for cross-posting) 
so that there will be a record there.

Best,
  John
On 2022-04-26 11:22 a.m., Prof Brian Ripley wrote: