From ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk  Sat Nov  9 21:17:47 2002
From: ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk (ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk)
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2002 21:17:47 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: (PR#2275) Re: Bug#168259: r-base-core: help.start() assumes
 netscape is installed
In-Reply-To: <20021109175518.GA2518@sonny.eddelbuettel.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0211092107370.13879-100000@gannet.stats>

On Sat, 9 Nov 2002, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 03:51:10PM +0000, ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk wrote:
> > > To best of my knowledge, this R feature dates from a time when
> > > Netscape was essentially the only browser out there. It also had
> > > a most useful feature: you could attach new request (resulting in
> > > a new "frame" in X11 / window manager parlance) to a running Netscape
> > > making startup for this request /much/ faster than starting a new
> > > Netscape executable.
> >
> > and netscape no longer allows multiple executables to run.
>
> I just confirmed that mozilla does. E.g.
>   mozilla http://bbc.com & sleep 3; mozilla -remote "openurl(http://cnn.com)"
> happily switches the running session from the BBC to CNN.

That's not running multiple executables: that is remote-controlling an
existing one.  Not only that, the second command takes over any existing
mozilla on the display, even one running on a completely different machine
(e.g. a session on a remote Solaris box).  It's the last part that is
fatal to the earlier help.start/help scheme.

For me, on Linux, both Mozilla 1.1 and Netscape 7.0 refuse to allow me to
run a new copy if one is already running.  This is an issue as the
help.start/help interface tries to run a new copy if running R remotely.

They do allow multiple invocations under Windows and seem only to run one
copy.

Try mozilla http://bbc.com & sleep 20; mozilla http://cnn.com.
I get a dialog box telling me a copy is already running under my profile
and refusing to allow me to run another one.

Brian

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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(PR#2275) Re: Bug#168259: r-base-core: help.start() assumes netscape is installed
ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk