With all due respect, Duncan, I can't find the message advising against using the Cygwin port. I did find a message about the mishandling of line endings, and I've asked on the cygwin forum (as advised). As I mentioned, I'm in an environment where updates are not possible, and I'm clarifying now that this means installations are even more impossible, at least not without extensive adminstrative delay. Basically, this is what I have to work with. If anyone can suggest good ideas for the challenges as-is, that would be much appreciated. However, given your posts, I fully understand if the answer is "no". On the other hand, simply demanding a solution consisting of a course of action which is impossible at present...well, it's just impossible. Having said that, I'll just say that I've managed to exort the powers that be to install a Windows based version of R, but I have to work with what I currently have for at least a week. I should also mention that I've submitted an update to the mailing list on a workaround for the R help problem on cygwin. It might not have propagated to recipients yet. I appreciate the further info on the extent of the bugginess of the cygwin port. On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 9:04 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> wrote: >On 16/04/2015 5:02 PM, paul wrote: >> The help for the cygwin port of R is buggy and hides random lines >> of text. > > You've already been told not to use the Cygwin port. It's buggy in > the help pages, and probably in many other respects as well. It > doesn't pass the R self-tests. Don't use it. > >> Consquently, I've been relying on Google, but it is often not >> clear how directly relevant the info is for the specific command >> that I'm using. For example, reshape is complicated, and has more >> than 1 version. >> >> Is there an online version of the help pages? >> >> I tried looking for html versions of the help pages by ferruting >> through the R.home() subtree. Haven't found them so far. There >> are package pages in subdirectories <package>/html/00Index.html, >> but they just contain links to html files that don't reside in my >> R.home() subtree. There are also subdirectories <package>/help, >> but they contain pages that I don't recognize (*.rds, *.rdb, >> *.rdx). >> >> Getting desparate here, and realizing how the web is not in any way >> a substituted for locally available help pages that you can be >> confident is right for your installation.
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