vignette                package:utils                R Documentation

View or List Vignettes

Description:

     View a specified vignette, or list the available ones.

Usage:

     vignette(topic, package = NULL, lib.loc = NULL, all = TRUE)

     ## S3 method for class 'vignette':
     print(x, ...)
     ## S3 method for class 'vignette':
     edit(name, ...)

Arguments:

   topic: a character string giving the (base) name of the vignette to
          view. If omitted, all vignettes from all installed packages
          are listed.

 package: a character vector with the names of packages to search
          through, or 'NULL' in which "all" packages (as defined by
          argument 'all') are searched.

 lib.loc: a character vector of directory names of R libraries, or
          'NULL'.  The default value of 'NULL' corresponds to all
          libraries currently known.

     all: logical; if 'TRUE' search all available packages in the
          library trees specified by 'lib.loc',  and if 'FALSE', search
          only attached packages.

 x, name: Object of class 'vignette'.

     ...: Ignored by the 'print' method, passed on to 'file.edit' by
          the 'edit' method.

Details:

     Function 'vignette' returns an object of the same class, the print
     method opens a viewer for it. Currently, only PDF versions of
     vignettes can be viewed. The program specified by the 'pdfviewer'
     option is used for this. If several vignettes have PDF versions
     with base name identical to 'topic', the first one found is used.

     If no topics are given, all available vignettes are listed.  The
     corresponding information is returned in an object of class
     '"packageIQR"'.

     The 'edit' method extracts the R code from the vignette to a
     temporary file and opens the file in an editor (see 'edit'). This
     makes it very easy to execute the commands line by line, modify
     them in any way you want to help you test variants, etc.. An
     alternative way of extracting the R code from the vignette is to
     run 'Stangle' on the source code of the vignette, see the examples
     below.

Examples:

     ## List vignettes from all *attached* packages
     vignette(all = FALSE)

     ## List vignettes from all *installed* packages (can take a long time!):
     vignette(all = TRUE)

     ## Not run: 
     ## Open the grid intro vignette
     vignette("grid")

     ## The same
     v1 <- vignette("grid")
     print(v1)

     ## Now let us have a closer look at the code
     edit(v1)

     ## An alternative way of extracting the code,
     ## R file is written to current working directory
     Stangle(v1$file)

     ## A package can have more than one vignette (package grid has several):
     vignette(package="grid")
     vignette("rotated")
     ## The same, but without searching for it:
     vignette("rotated", package="grid")
     ## End(Not run)

