On 1/15/2009 12:50 PM, Jarrett Barber wrote:
Here's another help file question.
Some context: University setting wherein R is installed for
availability to students and course instructors across campus in
various PC labs. Windows Vista environment.
Goal: To maximize flexibility and functionality of installing add-on
packages and associated help files among different users, while
avoiding conflicts across different user libraries. (I could have my
difficult-to-access sysadmin install _all_ libraries, but this seems
wasteful, and would seem to present problems when my colleague or I
want to update a package or install a newly available package but do
not have time to wait a week or two for our sysadmin.)
Problem (?): As a course instructor, I want flexibility to install add-
on libraries to a user (not site) library, and I don't want to step on
my colleagues' toes (or vice-versa) when it comes to add-on packages
and associated help files for use in classes. I have no problem
installing add-on packages to a user library, with one exception: I do
not have permission to update the file $RHOME/doc/html/packages.html,
as evidenced by a permission error upon installing a package to a user
library using update.packages (not to the default site library, which
is also restricted). The installed add-on packages work fine, with
the exception of some of the help functionality. I find myself having
to use browseURL() to point to the html files in the package's file
structure. I cannot expect the average student (or senior colleague)
to tolerate this situation.
A simpler way to get to the HTML man pages is to run
options(htmlhelp=TRUE)
and then the regular ?topic or help("topic") will find the HTML help
pages in your local library.
I'm thinking that I simply need to have my sysadmin give me and my
colleagues (all users who want to install add-ons packages?)
permission to read/write packages.html, and the problem will go away.
But, before I ask my sysadmin to give permission, I want to know, does
this create another problem? For example, my colleague creates a
library for STAT3000BC, which, I assume, will modify packages.html
(assuming my sysadmin gives permission), then I create a library for
STAT2010, which also modifies packages.html. See my concern? Does R
somehow allow harmonious help functionality in such cases (by, for
example, maintaining separate copies of packages.html for different
users)?
You will likely have strange problems if you do that. The
doc/html/packages.html file is intended to talk about what is available
to everyone; I suspect in your scenario, it would be updated to show
your packages (but not your colleague's) whenever you added one, and
then updated to show your colleague's packages (but not yours) when he
added one, and would almost never be right for both of you.
The good news is that it looks as though sometime this year we will make
quite substantial changes to the way the help system is stored, so a lot
of things like packages.html could be generated on the fly.
Duncan Murdoch
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