utils (version 3.6.2)

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 remote is non-NULL.)

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

# NOT RUN {
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()))
# }