From murdoch at stats.uwo.ca  Wed Jul  5 12:40:41 2006
From: murdoch at stats.uwo.ca (Duncan Murdoch)
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2006 06:40:41 -0400
Subject: [Rd] options("quit.with.no.save"), and Windows installer changes
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0607050820360.1149@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
References: <44AA5FC8.9020106@stats.uwo.ca>
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	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0607050820360.1149@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <44AB9729.1060806@stats.uwo.ca>

On 7/5/2006 3:22 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Jul 2006, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> 
>> On 7/4/2006 11:57 AM, Uwe Ligges wrote:
>>> Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>>>>> "Duncan" == Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>
>>>>>>>>>     on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 08:32:08 -0400 writes:
>>>>     Duncan> I've just committed a couple of changes to R-devel related to requests
>>>>     Duncan> at userR about the Windows installer.  The first of these affects all
>>>>     Duncan> platforms, but I've only tested it on Windows:
>>>>
>>>>     Duncan> I added an option "quit.with.no.save".  If TRUE,
>>>>     Duncan> then the default q("ask") prompt will not offer to
>>>>     Duncan> save the workspace.  This is in response to the
>>>>     Duncan> observation that new users who are instructed not to
>>>>     Duncan> save their workspace, get confused when they
>>>>     Duncan> accidentally answer Yes to the prompt to save it.
>>>>
>>>> Ok...  but I probably misunderstand a bit:
>>>>
>>>> The default has not been   q(save = "ask") but  q(save = "default"),
>>>> and that default has depended on startup.
>>>>
>>>> Even now, "R --no-save"  already did have the desired effect,
>>>> on Unix at least.  For my ESS setup, I have made this an automatic
>>>> default many months ago.
>>>>
>>>> Wouldn't it be easier and sufficient to make "--no-save" a
>>>> working option on all platforms ?
>>>> Or is the point really about changing the quitting dialog?
>>>> For me quitting *without* a dialog is the most important thing
>>>> which I use (often several times a day).
>>>>
>>>>     Duncan> I'm not sure about the wording of the user prompt
>>>>     Duncan> question, which is now "Quit and discard
>>>>     Duncan> workspace?".  The problem with this wording is that
>>>>     Duncan> someone who automatically hits "y" will lose their
>>>>     Duncan> work.  I've tried on Windows to make the dialog box
>>>>     Duncan> look different enough that they should be warned.
>>>>
>>>> good!
>>>>
>>>>     Duncan> I haven't made any change to the Mac GUI to support this.  On
>>>>     Duncan> Unix-alikes, the text prompt should respect this option.
>>>>
>>>>     Duncan> The other change is to the Windows installer, to
>>>>     Duncan> allow the user to choose whether to set
>>>>     Duncan> quit.with.no.save, MDI/SDI display, and help style
>>>>     Duncan> at install time.  The only (intentional) change to
>>>>     Duncan> the current behaviour is to default to CHM help
>>>>     Duncan> instead of plain text.
>>>>
>>>> People have asked me in private about this, and I didn't know
>>>> the answer:
>>>> Is it true that this means that people can no longer commit the
>>>> "cheap package install trick" on Windows for  R-code-only
>>>> packages?
>>>> Namely
>>>>   1) install a source package on a Linux/Unix/MacOSX machine
>>>>      (where it is often simple to have all the necessary tools available)
>>>>   2) zip the resulting installed package
>>>>   3) unzip it on the target Windows machine into the corresponding
>>>>      library (directory).
>>>>
>>>> Of course, this trick will not provide any *.chm help files.
>>>> Will the cheap-installed package still work, using the *.txt (or
>>>> *.html) help files?
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, the user has to ask
>>>     help(topic, chmhelp = FALSE)
>>> in this case, or (s)he get the message:
>>>
>>>               No CHM help for 'foo' in package 'pkg' is available:
>>>       the CHM file for the package is missing
>>>
>>> Perhaps it is possible to arrange some fallback to plain text help if
>>> chmhelp is not available: in print.help_files_with_topic call print() on
>>> the "help_files_with_topic" object again, but change attribute "type" to
>>> "help" before that call ...
>> Yes, that seems to work.  I'll add that.
> 
> Before help() was reorganized to use print() methods it used to fall back 
> to text help if other versions were not available (at least on Windows), 
> so it does seem sensible to reinstate that.

It's not completely reinstated:  I only put in the fallback in the 
particular case where the .chm file was not found.  Other failure modes 
still die with an error.

Duncan Murdoch



[Rd] options("quit.with.no.save"), and Windows installer changes
Duncan Murdoch