[racket-dev] help on Help Desk

Bug #12115 is really throwing me.  The reported symptom is "picturing-programs documentation is not searchable in Help Desk," but that's not quite true.

I start up DrRacket in BSL and type "(require picturing-programs)" in Definitions pane, then hit Run.
If I do NOT have a browser running, and I explicitly invoke "Help Desk" from the DrRacket menu, then search for (say) map-image, it finds it, no problem.
If I then invoke "Help Desk" from the menu again, I get another browser tab that also finds map-image, no problem.
If I then search for map-image by highlighting the function name and hitting F1, I get another browser tab that does NOT find map-image.
What's more, the previously-opened tabs have now forgotten how to find map-image, which they found without difficulty a few seconds ago.
Invoking Help Desk from the menu doesn't help: if I've EVER used F1, the search context is irretrievably lost.
Hitting "Run" in DrRacket doesn't help: all the tabs have now lost the context that enabled them to find "map-image".
Closing all the tabs in the browser doesn't help; any newly created tab is still missing that context.
Quitting the browser DOES help: any Help Desk tab opened thereafter has the right context, until I use F1, at which point they all lose it.

In short, Help Desk can find picturing-programs-specific documentation iff (I haven't used F1 since the last time I started the browser).
This is on a Mac with Firefox; I haven't experimented with it on Windows (where the bug was reported) yet, nor with different browsers.

BTW, the same thing happens if picturing-programs is loaded as a teachpack rather than with "require".

Who's in charge of the Help Desk (and, more particularly, the F1 keyboard shortcut)?


Stephen Bloch
sbloch at adelphi.edu