Liaw, Andy wrote: >> From: Hin-Tak Leung >> >> Gabor Grothendieck wrote: >> >>> I wonder if the software here: >>> >>> http://morte.jedrea.com/~jedwin/projects/chmlib/ >>> >>> or at any of the links on that page might allow elimination of >>> the need for separately downloading the Microsoft Help compiler >>> -- which is just one more task that one must perform to get up >>> and running to build your own R packages on Windows. >> >> Actually, why does one need to depend on the Microsoft Help >> compiler? The windows build of GNU makeinfo can generate MS *.hlp >> file directly. That's more "native" MS windows than CHM files. > > > Personally my order of preference is > > CHM > plain text > HLP > > Isn't it true that even MS is moving away from HLP?
WINHLP comes with a built-in search-and-index functionalty, and rather more user-friendly than CHM or plain text. I am talking about indexing and searching sizeable documents with internal organizations and structures. Even pdf is better the plain text. You want the R-reference manual as a text file? I am against additional dependency (particularly at build-time, unless you bundle it), especially on software that has just been written and may not be around/maintained in a few months' time (one can at least say the microsoft CHM compiler will be around!). Since much of R's documentation is already quite texinfo/makeinfo friendly, it is just an extra couple of line in the makefile to generate hlp file, ditto for rtf and ditto for pdf. HT ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
