[ESS] launch help.start() in EWW browser

[Naresh Gurbuxani]

Correcting a mistake in the section on Mac terminal emacs.  Here in R session, browser option is already set up.  

!> options("browser”)
 $browser
 [1] "/usr/bin/open” 

 
> On Sep 9, 2025, at 12:34 PM, Naresh Gurbuxani <naresh_gurbuxani using hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: Tyler Smith via ESS-help <ess-help using r-project.org>
>> Date: September 8, 2025 at 10:05:20 PM EDT
>> To: ESS-help <ess-help using r-project.org>
>> Subject: [ESS] launch help.start() in EWW browser
>> Reply-To: Tyler Smith <tyler using plantarum.ca>
>> 
>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, at 6:17 AM, Naresh Gurbuxani via ESS-help wrote:
>>> When running R in terminal emacs, what options are needed so that
>>> help.start() opens EWW browser?
>> 
>> The following elisp code opens the R html docs in EWW, when called via `M-x ess-eww`.
>> 
>> It seems to work fine for me on Ubuntu Linux. If it works generally, I'd be happy to clean it up for inclusion in ESS.
>> 
>> Alternatively, if we accept running Emacs in daemon mode as a pre-requisite (i.e., meaning emacsclient is available), it's probably not too hard to find the proper syntax for the `browser` argument of `help.start()`. I looked at that too, but then this approach presented itself. It has the advantage of not needing the emacsclient server.
>> 
>> Let me know if this looks useful!
>> 
>> - tyler
>> 
>> 
>> ```
>> (defun ess-eww ()
>>  (interactive)
>>  (let ((BUF (generate-new-buffer "URL"))
>>        (PORT)) 
>>    (ess-command "print(tools::startDynamicHelp(NA))" BUF)
>>    (with-current-buffer BUF
>>      (setq PORT (buffer-substring 5 (point-max))))
>>    (kill-buffer BUF)
>>    (eww (concat "http://127.0.0.1:" PORT "/doc/html/index.html"))))
>> ```
>> 
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