[R] missing X11 graphics title bar

[Steven K Thompson]

I have on occasion had the problem of missing title bars on X11
graphics windows when using R, and would like to know what others have
found in terms of the occurance, source, or solution of this problem.
In searching for information on this I found only the brief thread
from last November which I have copied below.  Anyone who has
experienced this knows it brings a very unwelcome interruption to work
as one struggles to move or close the obstructing graphics windows
having no frames.  

I first experienced this problem with a Mac OSX system in which I was
using R under X11.  My R program called C functions and the problem
only occured when I was using graphics with fairly intensive
computations going on at the same time.

Recently, I've encountered this problem with a Linux system (Ubuntu)
using Gnome 2.8 with its default window manager Metacity.  On the
advice from the thread below, I changed window manager (to icewm) and
that eliminated the problem, except that the default Metacity seems
otherwise to work more efficiently and faster with Gnome.

I should note that I have been using Debian 3.0 (with gnome/icewm) for
almost three years with never any problem like this.

Thanks in advance for any information anyone may have on this issue.

Steve

From: Luke Tierney <luke_at_stat.uiowa.edu>
Date: Fri 12 Nov 2004 - 01:16:00 EST

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Martyn Plummer wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 09:19 +0100, Martyn Plummer wrote:
> > On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 19:47, Jonathan Baron wrote:
> > > On 11/09/04 20:37, Jari Oksanen wrote:
> > > >
> > > >On 9 Nov 2004, at 19:44, Jonathan Baron wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> The RPM for Fedora Core 2 seems to work just fine on Core 3.
> > > >>
> > > >> (The graphics window got smaller, but I'm sure there is a
> setting
> > > >> for that.)
> > > >>
> > > >That would be good news. I really don't know how the graphics
> window
> > > >became so big at some stage. (MacOS X is just cute here: tiny,
> sharp,
> > > >fast graphics window.)
> > >
> > > I have the opposite problem, a 1680x1050 display.
> > >
> > > >Has the options()printcmd reappeared, so that dev.print() works
> without
> > > >changing default options?
> > >
> > > I can't imagine how this would change. This is the same "old"
> > > RPM, not a new one. The option is there, and I don't think it
> > > ever disappeared. I can't test it. This is my laptop, which is
> > > not set up to print anything.
> >
> > My mistake. The default print command is determined at configure
> time.
> > But the RedHat RPMS are built in a sandbox that has only the
> minimal
> > configuration needed to build R. This doesn't include the lpr
> package so
> > the default print command is null. I will fix this in the next RPM
> > release, but right now I am upgrading to FC3.
>
> An RPM for Fedora Core 3 should be on a CRAN mirror near you by the
> weekend. This fixes the printcmd bug.
>
> The X11() window is the right size for me, but it doesn't have a
> title
> bar, which is a nuisance.
>
> Martyn
>

I've seen this with X11 a little on FC2 but much more with rgl (maybe
50% of the time with rgl vs 5-10% for X11()). Ross Ihaka tried
replacing the default metacity window manager with sawfish and found
that the problem seemed to go away. Ross also found a bug report for
metacity,

   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=126571

that might be related. It might also be something we are not doing
quite right in opening a window that happens to bite metacity more
than other wms. If anyone has the time and energy to pursue this
please do.

Best,

luke

-- 
Luke Tierney
University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
   Actuarial Science
241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:      luke at stat.uiowa.edu
Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu

______________________________________________
-- 
Steven K. Thompson
Department of Statistics
Pennsylvania State University
address for 2004-5 academic year:
132 Mesa Vista Street
Santa Fe, NM 87501
phone: 505 982 5466