From hadley at rice.edu  Wed Feb  2 17:38:59 2011
From: hadley at rice.edu (Hadley Wickham)
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 10:38:59 -0600
Subject: [Rd] Using MathJax in R's help system
In-Reply-To: <1296664429.2269.49.camel@GongTop1>
References: <1296633646.25319.58.camel@GongTop1>
	<AANLkTi=RD0gyB8QnAs7aa2yv7647_x2SBAyZ_AL=LLoz@mail.gmail.com>
	<1296664429.2269.49.camel@GongTop1>
Message-ID: <AANLkTik6YmG6YMvJ5E-_yBcFv4zZ-MGP1NMpB5X8B3-u@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Gong-Yi Liao <gong-yi.liao at uconn.edu> wrote:
> Thank you for comments,
>
> ? 1. ? About MathJax's sheer size:
>
> ? ? ? ?I think we can consider the following two cases:
>
> ? ? ? ?A. ?The user starts nanohttpd on his/her own PC and read the
> ? ? ? ? ? ?help files in html
> ? ? ? ? ? ?(i.e. ? ?> options(help_type="html", browser="xdg_open")
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? > ?svd ?)
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ?For this case, I think that ?the user can just ?install a
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ?MathJax distribution on his/her own PC (or workstation)
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ?and let the local nanohttpd send the MathJax scripts,
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ?fonts and image files to user's browser. ?Since all the
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ?MathJax files are transmitted locally (i.e. at the same
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ?IP, on the same machine), I think 130 MB ?is not a big
> ? ? ? ? ? ? ?issue in this case.

But the user still needs to get it in some way - an additional
installation step means that it's probably not suitable for inclusion
with base R.  It could possibly be bundled inside a package, using
some tricks to keep all the files in a single zip file, which reduces
the bundle size to a manageable 15 meg.

> ? ? ? ?B. ?The user reads the R help html pages, ?which are hosted by
> ? ? ? ? ? ?a third party httpd server
>
> ? ? ? ? ? ? For this case, I think a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
> ? ? ? ? ? ? hosting server is needed. MathJax's 130 MB size can be a
> ? ? ? ? ? ? critical issue in this case. ?As far as I know, there's
> ? ? ? ? ? ? a site ( mathjax.connectmv.com ) providing such service,
> ? ? ? ? ? ? but I can't imagine if all the R users around the world
> ? ? ? ? ? ? request resources from this site 24-7, the site must
> ? ? ? ? ? ? be DoSed.

Agreed.

> ? ?2. About the helpr package:
>
> ? ? ? ?I install the helpr package from CRAN, and, maybe due to my
> ? ? ? ?problem, ?the manual of this package is quite confusing to me.
> ? ? ? ?I run the command helpr and my browser shows me the following
> ? ? ? ?content:

Could you please provide a reproducible example?

The following steps should get you up and running:

install.packages("helpr")
library(helpr)
helpr()

The solr warnings will be removed in the next version - you can ignore
them for now.

Hadley

-- 
Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair
Department of Statistics / Rice University
http://had.co.nz/



[Rd] Using MathJax in R's help system
Hadley Wickham