help() Type="pdf" and View It

Utility to view PDF-rendered help pages; particularly useful in case they contain mathematical formulas or otherwise sophisticated formats.

Usage

helppdf(topic, viewer = getOption("pdfviewer"), quiet = !interactive(), ...)

Arguments

topic

the topic, passed to help().

viewer

a pdf viewer; the default is typically what you want interactively.

quiet

logical indicating that nothing should be printed to the console and the result should be returned as invisible().

...

further optional arguments passed to help().

Value

Returns the full path of the pdf file produced.

Author

Martin Maechler

See also

help, system.

Examples

if(interactive()) {
  ## Both calls work :
  helppdf(Normal)
  helppdf("NegBinomial")
} else if(.Platform$OS.type != "windows") { # batch mode (Windows often too slow for this)
  od <- setwd(tempdir())
  ff <- helppdf(Normal, viewer=NULL)
  stopifnot(file.exists(ff)) ; print(ff)
  setwd(od)# revert to previous dir.
}
#> Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet = quiet,     texi2dvi = texi2dvi, texinputs = texinputs, index = index): Running 'texi2dvi' on './tex259fe5d89e680.tex' failed.
#> LaTeX errors:
#> ! LaTeX Error: File `inconsolata.sty' not found.
#> 
#> Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
#> or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)
#> 
#> ! Emergency stop.
#> <read *> 
#>          
#> l.326 ^^M
#>          
#> !  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!