R 2.10.0, due out October 26, will switch to an internal html converter from
the latex-alike Rd format coupled with an internal webserver. See below for
the section on 'Significant user-visible changes' in the NEWS file from
2.10.0 -- taken from the Oct 13 beta currently in unstable.
This means we "should" rebuild all packages or else they will upon load
trigger a nagging message 'package foo was built under R version x.y.z and
may not function properly' as well as possible malfunctions of the help
system. As we're only talking 100+ packages, this should work.
I would appreciate some pointers as to how I can milk out fancypants new mega
databases to extracts all packages (matching r-cran-*; there are only one or
two exceptions to that rules) and their maintainers ... and ideally even
monitor most recent re-builds. Anybody feel like sharing some hints with me
off-line?
Also, and the security minded folks may want to consider the second bullet
point: do we need to worry about this or not as it is just the loopback
interface? Seems fine to me but I figured I'd better ask :)
Please CC me on replies.
Cheers, Dirk
**************************************************
* *
* 2.10 SERIES NEWS *
* *
**************************************************
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.10.0
SIGNIFICANT USER-VISIBLE CHANGES
o Package help is now converted from Rd by the R-based converters
that were first introduced in 2.9.0. This means
- Packages that were installed by R-devel after 2009-08-09
should not be used with earlier versions of R, and most
aspects of package help (including the runnable examples)
will be missing if they are so used.
- Text, HTML and latex help and examples for packages
installed under the new system are converted on-demand from
stored parsed Rd files. (Conversions stored in packages
installed under R < 2.10.0 are used if no parsed Rd files
are found. It is recommended that such packages be
re-installed.)
o HTML help is now generated dynamically using an HTTP server
running in the R process and listening on the loopback
interface.
- Those worried about security implications of such a server
can disable it by setting the environment variable
R_DISABLE_HTTPD to a non-empty value. This disables
help.start() and HTML help (so text help is shown instead).
- The Java/Javascript search engine has been replaced by an
HTML interface to help.search(). help.start() no longer has
an argument 'searchEngine' as it is no longer needed.
- The HTML help can now locate cross-references of the form
\link[pkg]{foo} and \link[pkg:foo]{bar} where 'foo' is an
alias in the package, rather than the documented (basename
of a) filename (since the documentation has been much
ignored).
--
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.
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