On 29/10/2009 1:07 AM, Rolf Turner wrote:
After looking at the help for tools::startDynamicHelp and groping around considerably, I had a look at the Firefox Preferences. Going to Advanced --> Network --> Configure how Firefox connects to the the Internet (Settings), I found stuff about ``Proxies''. (Dunno what they are, but the word ``proxy'' came up in the error message from Firefox.)The existing setting was ``Manual proxy configuration''. I changed to ``No proxy'' (hammer and hope; no idea what I'm doing) and help.start() took effect without any error messages appearing from Firefox. But I still got help in the command window. Then I set options(help_type="html") and it all worked. I shall put options(help_type="html") into my .Rprofile, and then help.start() should work automatically. Said he optimistically. What trouble am I leaving myself open to by setting ``No proxy'', but?
You may find that you can't connect to websites outside of your local network. Proxies are used to control connections in and out of networks. Without the proxy you might be blocked; with it, some sites will be blocked, and others will be redirected through some server that lets them out. It's also possible there will be no trouble, because the same scheme is sometimes used without the external blocking, but then usually the user of the system can't turn it on and off.
You should be able to program the proxy to be selective, and let Firefox connect to R directly but still redirect external connections to other sites, but you'll need to take some action to do it.
Duncan Murdoch _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
