help(name="help", offline=F, call=F, arg, connection=NULL, oldOK=T, text, sig=NULL, browser=options()$help.browser, pager=options()$help.pager, window=help.running(), display=getenv("DISPLAY"), must.find=T)
name
is not a valid syntactic
name, or if it is an S-PLUS reserved word such as
if
,
for
, or
break
, it must be enclosed in quotes. S-PLUS
searches the directories in the search list for the appropriate help file and
displays it. The default value displays this help file (documentation for the
help
function).
offline=TRUE
, the requested
help file is not printed directly to the screen. Instead, if
connection
is not provided, the requested
documentation is run through an appropriate formatter and then to a printer; if
connection
is given, the requested help is run
through a formatter and printed to the specified file or connection object.
NULL
, which causes the output to
be sent to a printer when
offline=TRUE
.
options("help.pager")
is used as the pager. The
default value for the
help.pager
option is
slynx, which is a slightly modified version of the lynx
terminal-based HTML browser.
slynx is available only as a separate download as part of
the pkgutils package: use the
install.pkgutils
function to install it.
If slynx is not on your system then the default pager will
be one of commonly available programs
lynx, lynx, less, or more.
The first two of these can display HTML nicely but won't be able to follow
links to other help files.
The latter choices will show the raw HTML code.
Useful alternatives include
pager="slynx -dump -nolist"
to print the help text
in the same window where S-PLUS is running, and
pager="netscape"
to print the help text in a
Netscape window. If
help.running()
returns
TRUE
, the
pager
argument is ignored for all existing help files.
window=TRUE
, the requested
help file appears in its own window. If the S-PLUS graphical user interface is
being used, the
window
argument is automatically
set to
TRUE
.
help
window. The DISPLAY environment
variable is examined by default. If
display
is
specified, the
window
argument is assumed to be
TRUE
.
must.find=TRUE
, S-PLUS
attempts to return either a real help file or a self-doc file for
name
. If neither is possible, S-PLUS returns the
error message "No documentation for topic name." If
must.find=FALSE
, S-PLUS returns you to the help
browser so that you can search for the desired help file.
name
, the help
file is printed. Otherwise a message is printed stating that no documentation
is available.
The default S-PLUS help pager slynx has the following basic commands:
Spacebar move down a page
CTRL-B move up a page
> TAB highlight the next topic
Up-arrow highlight the previous topic
Right-arrow jump to the highlighted topic
Left-arrow return to the previous topic
/xxx highlight next occurrence of xxx
n repeat the last search
q exit help and return to S-PLUS
If S-PLUS is running under the X window system and
window=TRUE
, the requested help file is displayed
in its own window (the HTML browser slynx by default). The window
disappears when you exit the help file. Be sure to exit the HTML browser to
close the window in the cleanest way possible; killing the window can leave
extra processes running.
To launch the JavaHelp help browser, use the
help.start
function. The JavaHelp browser is an
HTML help viewer with an intuitive user interface. The JavaHelp window contains
two panes and a toolbar. The left pane has three tabs allowing you to view any
of the following: a Table of Contents, an Index of topics, or a Full-Text
Search facility. The right pane shows help text. The toolbar contains buttons
for the Previous and Next files, and for printing and page setup.
You can copy text in the JavaHelp viewer by highlighting the desired text and
pressing
CTRL-C
. You can paste text into the
Commands window that has been copied from JavaHelp by pressing
CTRL-V
, or by using your usual UNIX paste command.
The
prompt
function can be used to create help
files for your own functions. This returns a skeleton help file for an S-PLUS
function. You can then use the HINSTALL and BUILD_JHELP
utilities to install your help files and create the help sets that JavaHelp
requires. See the chapter "Chapters and Libraries" in the S-PLUS
Programmer's Guide.
The
offline
argument is installation-dependent and
must be set up appropriately by the administrator of S-PLUS on each system.
The
?
function provides some help features not
available with
help
. In particular, you can see
help files for S-PLUS classes using the
?
function. See the
?
help file for more details.
# Display this help file. help() # Documentation for the function stem(). help(stem) # Addition operator and other arithmetic functions. help("+") # Help file for state data sets. help("state") # Print state data offline. help("state", offline = T) # Help file for plot. # The file is printed in a separate window if possible. help(plot, window = T)