[Rd] [R] Sweave stops when opening X11 device fails

[Andreas Borg]

Hi all,

I am posting this again because I got no reply on r-help. Maybe the 
devel-list is the right place for this kind of question.

I've run into the following problem with Sweave: I frequently run Sweave
from a xterm console within an X session owned by a different user, i.e.
my colleague is logged in on this computer and I do "su" with my
username and start R and Sweave afterwards. Now, when Sweave comes to a
figure chunk, it sees that there is an X server running and tries to
show whatever I plot in that chunk on the screen, additionally to
writing a pdf file. The problem is that I am not logged into the X
session myself, and the script fails with a message saying someting like
"could not open device X11" (I have German messages, so I do not know
what the exact phrase would be in English). When I log in with putty,
where there is no X11 at all, everything works fine. Is there a way to
prevent Sweave from failing in the former case? Would this even account
as a bug? I think it would be nice if the script just kept on running
without plotting on the screen if opening X11 fails, just like it does
when no X11 is available at all.

Best regards,

Andreas

p.s.: I would be willing to dig in the code and look for a fix myself, 
but it would be great if anyone could give a hint where to look. I 
suspect "RweaveDriverRuncode" is the right place, but in what namespace 
is it?

-- 
Andreas Borg
Medizinische Informatik

UNIVERSITÄTSMEDIZIN
der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität
Institut für Medizinische Biometrie, Epidemiologie und Informatik
Obere Zahlbacher Straße 69, 55131 Mainz
www.imbei.uni-mainz.de

Telefon +49 (0) 6131 175062
E-Mail: borg at imbei.uni-mainz.de

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