[Rd] New version of X11, png and jpeg

[Prof Brian Ripley]

That call is from Cairo 1.2, so looks like our test FC5 box had a later 
version of the cairo libraries than the one pkg-config reported.

You should be able to build with --without-cairo until such a time as we 
can add a suitable configure test.

Thank you for the report.

On Mon, 25 Feb 2008, Roger Peng wrote:

> (Apologies, I meant to 'Reply to all' the first time but forgot).
>
> I built r44608 of R-devel with (I think) cairo support.   At least,
> that's what the configure script told me.  In addition,
> 'capabilities("cairo")' is TRUE.  Calling X11(type = "Cairo") gives me
> the error:
>
> Error in X11() : X11 module cannot be loaded
> In addition: Warning message:
> In X11() :
> unable to load shared library
> '/home/rpeng/install/R-devel/lib64/R/modules//R_X11.so':
> /home/rpeng/install/R-devel/lib64/R/modules//R_X11.so: undefined
> symbol: cairo_image_surface_get_data
>
>
> I figured I must be missing a library somewhere, but I'm not sure how
> to track down which one.  Any thoughts here?
>
> I'm on a FC5 system with:
>
> cairo-devel-1.0.4-1
> cairo-1.0.4-1
> cairo-1.0.4-1
>
> and
>
> pango-1.12.4-4
> pango-devel-1.12.4-4
> pango-1.12.4-4
>
> Also, I have
>
> [rpeng at audrey R-source]$ pkg-config --modversion pango
> 1.12.4
> [rpeng at audrey R-source]$ pkg-config --modversion cairo
> 1.0.4
>
> -roger
>
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
> <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>> R-devel has new versions of the X11(), png() and jpeg() devices on
>>  Unix-alikes.  The intention is that these are used identically to the
>>  previous versions (which remain available) but will produce higher-quality
>>  output with more features.
>>
>>  Pros:
>>
>>  Antialiasing of text and lines (can be turned off) but no blurring of
>>  fills.
>>
>>  Buffering of the X11 display and fast repainting from a backing image.
>>  (The intention is to emulate the timer-based buffering of the windows()
>>  device in due course, but not for 2.7.0.)
>>
>>  Ability to use translucent colours, including backgrounds, and produce
>>  partially transparent PNG files.
>>
>>  Scalable text, including to sizes like 4.5 pt. This allows more accurate
>>  sizing on non-standard screen sizes (e.g. my home machine has a 90dpi
>>  1650x1024 display whereas standard X11 fonts are set up for 75 or 100
>>  dpi).
>>
>>  Full support for UTF-8, so on systems with suitable fonts you can plot in
>>  many languages on a single figure (and this will work even in non-UTF-8
>>  locales).  The output should be locale-independent (unlike the current
>>  devices where even English text is rendered slightly differently in
>>  Latin-1 and UTF-8 locales).
>>
>>  A utility function savePlot() to make a PNG/JPEG/TIFF copy of the current
>>  plot.
>>
>>  The new png() and jpeg() devices do not require an X server to be running.
>>
>>  Cons:
>>
>>  Needs more software installed - cairo, pango and support packages (which
>>  on all the systems we have looked at are pulled in by the packages checked
>>  for).  You will see something like
>>
>>    Additional capabilities:   PNG, JPEG, iconv, MBCS, NLS, cairo
>>                                                            ^^^^^
>>  if configure finds the software we are looking for.
>>
>>  Slower under some circumstances (although on the test systems much faster
>>  than packages Cairo and cairoDevice).  This will be particularly true for
>>  X11() with a slow connection between the machine running R and the X
>>  server.
>>
>>  The additional software might not work correctly.
>>
>>
>>  The new versions are not currently the default, but can be made so by
>>  setting X11.options(type="Cairo"), e.g. as a load hook for package
>>  grDevices.  I am using
>>
>>  setHook(packageEvent("grDevices", "onLoad"),
>>      function(...) {
>>          grDevices::ps.options(horizontal=FALSE)
>>          if(getRversion() >= '2.7.0') grDevices::X11.options(type="Cairo")
>>      })
>>
>>
>>  Please try these out and let us know how you get on.  As a check, try the
>>  TestChars() examples in ?points - on one Solaris 10 system a few of the
>>  symbol font characters were incorrect.  It worked on an FC5 system with
>>
>>  auk% pkg-config --modversion pango
>>  1.12.4
>>  auk% pkg-config --modversion cairo
>>  1.0.4
>>
>>  so the versions required are not all recent.
>>
>>  Although these devices would in principle work on Mac OS X, neither cairo
>>  nor pango is readily available.  We are working on other versions for
>>  Mac OS (X11 based on cairo/freetype, png/jpeg based on Quartz).
>>
>>  There are also new svg() and tiff() devices.
>>
>>  --
>>  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
>>
>>  ______________________________________________
>>  R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Roger D. Peng  |  http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~rpeng/
>

-- 
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