help.start
Hypertext Documentation
Description
Start the hypertext (currently HTML) version of R's online documentation.
Usage
help.start(update = FALSE, gui = "irrelevant", browser = getOption("browser"), remote = NULL)
Arguments
update | logical: should this attempt to update the package index to reflect the currently available packages. (Not attempted if |
gui | just for compatibility with S-PLUS. |
browser | the name of the program to be used as hypertext browser. It should be in the PATH, or a full path specified. Alternatively, it can be an R function which will be called with a URL as its only argument. This option is normally unset on Windows, when the file-association mechanism will be used. |
remote | A character string giving a valid URL for the ‘R_HOME’ directory on a remote location. |
Details
Unless remote
is specified this requires the HTTP server to be available (it will be started if possible: see startDynamicHelp
).
One of the links on the index page is the HTML package index, ‘R.home("docs")/html/packages.html’, which can be remade by make.packages.html()
. For local operation, the HTTP server will remake a temporary version of this list when the link is first clicked, and each time thereafter check if updating is needed (if .libPaths
has changed or any of the directories has been changed). This can be slow, and using update = TRUE
will ensure that the packages list is updated before launching the index page.
Argument remote
can be used to point to HTML help published by another R installation: it will typically only show packages from the main library of that installation.
See Also
help()
for on- and off-line help in other formats.
browseURL
for how the help file is displayed.
RSiteSearch
to access an on-line search of R resources.
Examples
help.start() ## Not run: if(.Platform$OS.type == "unix") # includes Mac ## the 'remote' arg can be tested by help.start(remote = paste0("file://", R.home())) ## End(Not run)
Copyright (©) 1999–2012 R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License.