Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
When you linked to ../examples/ R was not involved, and what you are
seeing is what your browser did with a file:// url. Most browsers will
support a wide range of file types, and list directories: but that is
not something that was ever (AFAICS) documented to work.
The 'issue' is your expectations when creating your own
inst/doc/index.html. The only relative links that are supported by the
help system are to R package help topics and files, to documentation
under R.home("doc") and a limited set of files in a package's 'doc'
directory to support its use for vignettes, including the ability to
list 'doc' itself (if requested in a particular way).
If links to files under <pkg>/example worked, it was a bug. Because of
security concerns over traffic snooping, what you can see through the
dynamic help system is intentionally very limited. In fact I suspect
they worked for you only because
(i) you installed into .Library
(ii) you had a file for which text/plain worked (and that is because
files that might be in a vignette directory have been checked)..
(iii) you fell into a code branch marked '# should not get here' in
pre-2.10.0 (but absent in R-devel).
The good news is that if you refer to files under the installed 'doc'
directory this should work -- subdirectory listings work now in R-devel
and will probably be ported to 2.10.0 before release.
Many thanks for clarification and the good news, i.e. for allowing html
links to /doc (and also to DESCRIPTION).
Let me add one additional suggestion: Yes, I know that there are certain
related functions available (with different semantics), but what about
allowing html links to "/demo" and to some other special files like NEWS
and LICENSE (as found in MASS) or THANKS (like in Hmisc)?
Thanks for consideration.
Thomas Petzoldt
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