help.start {utils} | R Documentation

## Hypertext Documentation

### Description

Start the hypertext (currently HTML) version of R's online documentation.

### Usage

    help.start(update = FALSE, gui = "irrelevant",
               browser = getOption("browser"), remote = NULL)

### Arguments

`update` | logical: should this attempt to update the package index to reflect the currently available packages. (Not attempted if `remote` is non-`NULL`.)
`gui` | just for compatibility with S-PLUS.
`browser` | the name of the program to be used as hypertext browser. It should be in the PATH, or a full path specified. Alternatively, it can be an R function which will be called with a URL as its only argument. This option is normally unset on Windows, when the file-association mechanism will be used.
`remote` | A character string giving a valid URL for the ‘R_HOME’ directory on a remote location.

### Details

Unless `remote` is specified this requires the HTTP server to be available (it will be started if possible: see `startDynamicHelp`).

One of the links on the index page is the HTML package index, ‘R.home("docs")/html/packages.html’, which can be remade by `make.packages.html()`. For local operation, the HTTP server will remake a temporary version of this list when the link is first clicked, and each time thereafter check if updating is needed (if `.libPaths` has changed or any of the directories has been changed). This can be slow, and using `update = TRUE` will ensure that the packages list is updated before launching the index page.

Argument `remote` can be used to point to HTML help published by another R installation: it will typically only show packages from the main library of that installation.

### See Also

`help()` for on- and off-line help in other formats.

`browseURL` for how the help file is displayed.

`RSiteSearch` to access an on-line search of R resources.

### Examples

    help.start()
    ## Not run:
    if(.Platform$OS.type == "unix") # includes Mac
      ## the 'remote' arg can be tested by
      help.start(remote = paste0("file://", R.home()))

    ## End(Not run)

[Package utils version 3.6.0 Index]