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A general description is here.
R_PDFLATEXCMD is added to the environment variables set by 'R CMD' and is used by R CMD Rd2dvi.
R _LATEXCMD, R_PDFLATEXCMD, Rd2dvi now gives an explicit error message if latex (or pdflatex) is not available_MAKEINDEXCMD and R_DVIPSCMD default to 'latex', 'pdflatex', 'makeindex' and 'dvips' respectively if no suitable executable was found at configure time (since they might well be available at run time, particularly for binary installations of R). This affects R CMD Rd2dvi and help(offline=TRUE).
R CMD Rd2dvi now gives an explicit error message if latex (or pdflatex) fails.
Offline help on a Unix-alike now works even if options "latexcmd" and "dvipscmd" contain spaces (e.g. "dvips -Pmy_printer").
Informative error messages are given if running latex or dvips fail.