Unfortunately, I made a change to the Jupyter Lab settings recently. Jupyter had never been able to access the remote R help server. Usually this was never an issue because most help files are displayed in Jupyter. The way help is called on a function or method is typing: ?question. The "question" being the name of an R function or method. Ex. ?plot
Infrequently one of the R packages will not list its help in Jupyter and instead try to open the remote R help server. This has never worked in the past. The tab for a remote server never opened. This has never really been an issue until recently. Recently I decided to "fix" this issue and spent a good deal of time looking up the solution. I made this "fix" and Jupyter began working properly to open the remote R help server. But the fix is a problem that is way too obnoxious.
Each time I type the question mark in Jupyter, Jupyter causes the browser to open a new tab for the remote R help server. It is impossible to type fast enough after typing typing the ?. Once the ? is typed, the typing is interupted while the browser opens a new R server help website. As soon as returning to the typing, another browser tab opens and interrupts the typing .
It is impossible to finish typing the name of a function after the ? without having multiple interruptions to the typing while multiple new windows are opened in the browser at the R help server website. By the time I've finished typing: ?ppp, there will the 5 interruptions and new browser tabs opened. If I typed slowly, there may be 10 - 12 interruptions and 10 new tabs opened at the R help server.
How to prevent Jupyter from trying to access the remote R help server every time the ? is typed when looking up a description of a function? How to get back to that happy place I had before I'd made whatever change that caused this nightmare to happen?
Solved my own question.
This issue had nothing to do with R. I assumed I had changed a configuration in R, but that was not the case. This was an issue I had caused when I had changed a setting in Jupyter lab.
I can say with certainty this issue was definitely caused when I changed the "Contextual Help" setting under the Commands tab in Jupyter. This setting is related to the Contextual Help selection found under the Help tab. And this setting was causing multiple R help server tabs to open in the browser after I typed: ?
Upon rediscovering this Jupyter setting today I recalling that I had been down this path before. I selected "Contextual Help". Jupyter auto restarted and the issue went away. I can gladly say that I can perform search again for the description of an R function: Ex ?plot ,and receive the description of this function within Jupyter the same as before. I no longer have the issue of the browser opening or multiple new tabs at the remote R help server after typing ?