There have been a number of posts to this list by people having trouble with the HTML search engine. Often these troubles are caused by incorrect setups (user hasn't installed Java properly, or Java is disabled, or Javascript is disabled). Sometimes the trouble persists even when Java is installed properly.
I have written an alternative HTML search engine, which is based on Javascript rather than Java. (Hopefully, this means that there is less that can go wrong.) I haven't wrapped it up in a package yet, because I don't know how well it works or even if there is any interest. If you would like to try it, you can: source("http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~djw1005/Stats/Interests/search.R") helpHTML() (Or you can download the code and run it locally. You will also need to download searchtemplate.html from the same location. You can then run helpHTML(searchTemplate=localfilename) to tell it to use your local copy of searchtemplate.html.) ISSUES WITH MY CODE ------------------- I've tested it on Windows XP cross {R1.8.0,R1.9.0} cross {IE,Firebird}. I've also tested it on Debian 3.0 with R1.8.0 cross {Mozilla,Firebird}. I'd be grateful to learn whether it works elsewhere. Searching is a bit slow. On my newish computer it takes three seconds or so. On an older departmental machine it takes ten seconds. Such is (Javascript) life. My searching algorithm is not the same as the current searching algorithm. I wrote this for my own use, and so I've used a scoring mechanism which reflects the way I like to search. The text at the top of the search page explains some of the options. There are obviously things I don't understand about the current help setup. If anyone is sufficiently interested in this to explain them to me, I would be grateful. (1) On my Windows XP setup, R writes an index in the directory it was installed. What if it doesn't have write permission? (2) On my Debian setup, R copies all of the HTML help into a temporary directory. Why not just refer to the files where they are, rather than copying them all across? Because I don't understand these two points, I've written my indexing routines to (a) create a search index in a temporary directory, and (b) refer to the files in their install directories. My indexing routines run the same under both Windows and Linux. ISSUES WITH R ------------- The R "Installation and administration" document tells us that "Sun's Java Run-time Environment j2re 1.4.2_02 does not work under Linux". Prof Ripley said on 1 April 2004 that "if Linux/Unix, Sun JRE 1.4.2_02/3/4 are broken" This is news to those like myself who run Linux with Sun's JRE 1.4.2_03 and find that all their other applets work fine. (Though I'm sure there are bugs in the JRE, as in most complex projects.) On my computer, the trouble boiled down to this: the Javascript which displays search results was unable to interface with the Java applet which performed the search. As far as I am aware, there are no published standards which govern this interface. Therefore it is necessary to rely on vendor documentation (insofar as we can say that organizations which distribute free software are vendors). In the case of Mozilla, this interface is called LiveConnect; some documentation is available at mozilla.org. Generally speaking, an object on a web page may export certain methods, making them available to Javascript. For example, an object which contains a Java applet typically makes available the static methods of the classes in that applet. Again, I am not aware of any published standards on which methods are exported, so again we have to rely on vendor documentation. In the case of Sun's Java, the documentation explains how to use these exported methods http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/plugin/developer_guide/js_java.html However, the R HTML search page does not follow this documentation. I found that if I alter the R HTML search page to conform to this documentation, it works. It is always going to be difficult to write portable code when there are no published standards, only vendor-specific documentation. I have therefore attempted, in my Javascript search, to stick to pure ECMAscript (though undoubtedly I have failed in places). Damon. ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html