[R] Setting a pdf reader different from acroread under *nix

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 21 October 2007 at 09:39, Douglas Bates wrote:
| On 10/21/07, Vittorio.De.Martino.vdemart1 at tin.it
| <Vittorio.De.Martino.vdemart1 at tin.it> wrote:
| > Under FreeBSD 6.2 I installed R 2.6.0.
| > Trying to load e.g. vignette("zoo")  R calls acroread automagically.
| > I instead would like to use the lighter kde built-in pdf   reader kGhostView-
| > Is this possible?
| 
| Yes.  If you set an environment variable R_PDFVIEWER to the full name
| of the kGhostView executable before configuring and building R.
| 
| Alternatively you could create a file Renviron.site in the R_HOME/etc
| directory that defines R_PDFVIEWER to be the full name of the
| kGhostView executable (usually something like /usr/bin/kghostview).

Not to beat the issue to death, but one also can

i)  set   
	options(pdfviewer="kpdf")      
    (or "kghostview") in either a running R session, or your ~/.Rprofile
    or the global Rprofile.site

ii) set the R_PDFVIEWER environment variable somewhere before R gets started;
    choices would be ~/.profile or /etc/profile or /etc/bash.bashrc or
    ~/.bashrc; adapt accordingly for your local shell.

I like i) -- using ~/.Rprofile seems natural to me.  YMMV.

Hth, Dirk
 
-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.