[Rd] Sys.setlocale upsets windows graphics device (PR#8887)

[ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]

I tried this by installing Thai on my laptop (WinXP) and rebooting into 
Thai, and it failed for me.  The crash is in mbstowcs in MSVCRT.dll,
and does not happen in any English locale I tried, only C.

So I am afraid it is a Windows (or VC++) bug specific to your locale, and 
the only workaround is to avoid the C locale.  (In any case, the C locale 
does not work properly on Windows, and seems equivalent in most respects 
to US English, with WinANSI encoding (rather than ASCII).)


On Mon, 22 May 2006, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> On Mon, 22 May 2006, Edward wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> We tried it on 3 separate windows XP computers using version 2.3.0.
>> The original locale is set for Thailand on all 3.
>> So how do we fix it? Is there another patch?
>
> Don't try to do graphics in the C locale on your computer?
>
> I suspect this is a font problem in Windows, in that your fonts may be 
> specific to the Thai localization.  But without a means of reproducing this, 
> I can only guess.
>
> If you can set up a debugger (see the rw-FAQ), you may be able to give us
> some additional clues as the where the crash is occuring.
>
>> And why does the crash not happen with earlier R versions (eg. 2.2.1) on 
>> the same computer?
>
> Because of the issue mentioned in the CHANGES file, the change to the C 
> locale was reverted by opening a graphics window.
>
>> 
>> ---
>>> Sys.getlocale()
>> [1] 
>> "LC_COLLATE=Thai_Thailand.874;LC_CTYPE=Thai_Thailand.874;LC_MONETARY=Thai_Thailand.874;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=Thai_Thailand.874"
>> ---
>> 
>> Thanks
>> Edward
>> 
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Prof Brian Ripley" 
>> <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
>> To: <edward.m at psu.ac.th>
>> Cc: <R-bugs at biostat.ku.dk>
>> Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 2:32 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Rd] Sys.setlocale upsets windows graphics device (PR#8887)
>> 
>> 
>>> Works perfectly for me.  There was a bug in 2.2.1, but it was fixed in
>>> 2.2.1 patched (see CHANGES).
>>> 
>>> What locale were you changing from?  (This might be a Windows problem 
>>> specific to your locale.)
>>> 
>>> On Mon, 22 May 2006, edward.m at psu.ac.th wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Full_Name: Edward McNeil
>>>> Version: 2.3.0
>>>> OS: Widows XP
>>>> Submission from: (NULL) (203.170.234.5)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Type the following:
>>>> 
>>>>> Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL","C")
>>>>> hist(1:10)
>>>> 
>>>> CRASH
>>>> 
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
>>> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
>>> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
>>> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
>>> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595 
>> 
>> 
>
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595