[R] using Rterm under cygwin, no possiblity to delete characters

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 11:37:32AM +0200, Dewez Thomas wrote:
> Dear R-users,
> 
> Thanks to Roger Bivand, it appears that the real problem is coming from the
> way R talks to X11 under cygwin. Both other invocations of Rterm, either in
> a bash window without Xwindow capability or from the DOS command, work just
> fine.
> 
> Rterm breaks down every time it is invoked from a bash shell inside an
> Xwindow session. The symptoms are the following:
> + No popup window appears when invoking help() or plot() commands
> + Instead, the Windows task bar shows an R icon, but this icon cannot be
> restore to full screen
> + Rterm dies when hitting return after correcting typos
> the error message then is:
> ---
> Error: syntax error
> Execution halted
> ---

I cannot replicate this. I have been using Cygwin for years at different
workplaces under nt4 and now win2k (IT tends to be conservative in my
industry).

I use bash-inside-of-rxt as my main shell.  R runs in all forms
* as 'Rgui &' to launch the gui
* as Rterm called from ESS inside XEmacs (my main mode)
* as 'Rterm --no-save' to test your conjecture

None of these are influenced in any way or form by also allowing x11 access
(launched from another shell script; you can now launch an Xserver without
taking over the windows desktop; nice for remote apps from Unix boxen).

I don't think my setup is that unusual. I suspect your Cygwin installation
may have a problem.
 
> This suggests that Rterm is by-passing fvwm2 and the X11 environment to talk
> to windows directly. This is also probably the reason why terminal
> properties are forgotten when just using Rterm for typing commands. It
> forgets that it was invoked from bash and responds to all the keys pressed.
> If typos are corrected with backspace, Rterm reads is a gibberish string
> made of printable and non printable characters causing it to misunderstand
> the command and fail.

"Works for me" (TM)

Dirk

-- 
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
                                                -- Groucho Marx