[R] unable to view vignette in R

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Why not ask on r-sig-debian?: presumably it is a setting in the binary 
install of R you are using that is inappropriate on your systems.

On Sat, 15 Nov 2008, Erik Iverson wrote:

> I never could figure this out, I had the exact same issue though.  My 
> solution was to simply set
>
> options(pdfviewer = "evince")
>
> in my .Rprofile.  Presumably, you could set it to whatever PDF viewer is your 
> favorite.  I never looked further into why the default was doing what it was 
> doing.

You could also set the environment variable R_PDFVIEWER .

> Lionel Brooks wrote:
>> Hello All R-Gurus:
>> 
>> ISSUE:
>> Cannot view R vignettes due in Ubuntu Linux (a debian variant).
>> note: this issue has been posted to this list before with no responses 
>> given
>> see https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2007-September/141178.html
>> 
>> DETAILS:
>> I am trying to view an R vignette.
>> Here is the situation: I issue the openvignette(), then select the vignette 
>> I wish to view...and the system returns:
>> 
>> "Could not get a file descriptor referring to the console."
>> 
>> This action should spawn a ps viewer displaying the contents of the 
>> vignette for my enjoyment.
>> I suspect it may have something to do with the call to the postscript 
>> viewer application.
>> Is there a simple way to change this behavior within R?
>> 
>> Any Thoughts?
>> 
>> Here is the copy paste of my session
>> 
>> Code:
>>
>>  > openVignette()
>> Please select a vignette:
>> 1: annotate - Annotation Overview
>> 2: annotate - Basic GO Usage
>> 3: annotate - HowTo: Get HTML Output
>> 4: annotate - HowTo: use chromosomal information
>> 5: annotate - HOWTO: Use the online query tools
>> 6: annotate - Using Affymetrix Probe Level Data
>> 7: annotate - Using Data Packages
>> 8: annotate - Using the homology package
>> 9: AnnotationDbi - AnnotationDbi
>> 10: AnnotationDbi - SQLForge
>> 11: Biobase - An introduction to Biobase and ExpressionSets
>> 12: Biobase - Bioconductor Overview
>> 13: Biobase - esApply Introduction
>> 14: Biobase - Notes for eSet developers
>> 15: Biobase - Notes for writing introductory 'how to' documents
>> 16: Biobase - quick views of eSet instances
>> 17: geneplotter - How to assemble a chromLocation object
>> 18: geneplotter - Visualization of Microarray Data
>> 19: xtable - xtable Gallery
>> 
>> Selection: 17)
>> Opening 
>> /home/lbthrice/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.8/geneplotter/doc/byChroms.pdf
>>  > Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console
>> Could not get a file descriptor referring to the console
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
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>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide 
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

-- 
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