On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Damon Wischik wrote: > > 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?
That *is* described in the rw-FAQ. > (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 It doesn't, it copies some files and links others. The reason it copies some is that fairly recent security checks mean the code fails if those are links. The reason that it copies/links is that the HTML files have links of the form ../../pkgname/html/funcname.html which will not work across library trees. > 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.) Note that a patch-level release stopped existing code working, on some but not all platforms. If we did that in R without any mention in the relase notes, I am sure you would complain. > 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. Can you tell us exactly what changes you made, please? > 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). -- Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 ______________________________________________ [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