[R] rgl_081.708: rgl.snapshot fails, causing persistent problems

[Michael Friendly]

Thanks, John

What you say about mixing rgl.* and *3d calls may be true, but that is 
not my problem. After this occurred,
I tried many things, but reduced it to the smallest, most basic example 
(in my original post), using only plot3d(), that
worked perfectly in both the CRAN and R-Forge versions, until the first 
time I used rgl.snapshot()
with the development version.

Unfortunately, I'm now in a position where I can't test whether 
snapshot3d() does not provoke this,
because the basic *3d calls no longer work properly on my desktop 
machine. I'm reduced to working on my laptop to
create images for an upcoming talk.

-Michael

John Fox wrote:
> Dear Michael,
>
> I haven't tried rgl.snapshot() in the development version of rgl, so I can't
> comment on that, but I believe that these are two unrelated problems. I
> think that the version of rgl on CRAN fails to display text when rgl.* and
> *3d function calls are mixed, while this works in the development version.
>
> I hope this helps,
>  John
>
>
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
>>     
> On
>   
>> Behalf Of Michael Friendly
>> Sent: October-08-08 10:54 AM
>> To: R-Help
>> Subject: [R] rgl_081.708: rgl.snapshot fails, causing persistent problems
>>
>> *Summary*:  The latest Windows binary version of rgl_081.708 from
>> R-Forge has some problem that
>> causes rgl.snapshot() to fail, at least on my system.
>> Thereafter, *all* rgl 3D graphics are rendered without any text labels.
>> The last problem remains even after (a) removing rgl and re-installing
>> from CRAN, (b) re-starting
>> with a fresh installation of all of R 2.7.2.
>> *System*:  Win XP Pro
>>
>> A vexing and persistent problem arose after I installed rgl_081.708 from
>> R-Forge via
>> install.packages("rgl",repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org")
>>
>> Everything worked fine until the *first* time I tried to take a
>> rgl.snapshot() of the current
>> scene.
>>  > rgl.snapshot("test.png")
>> [1] "failed"
>>
>> OK, I did :
>> remove.packages("rgl")
>> install.packages("rgl")
>> to get rgl_081 from CRAN
>>
>> However, after that, snapshot works, but all rgl.text -- axis labels,
>> tick labels, plot
>> annotations, etc. do not appear.
>> E.g.: see
>> http://euclid.psych.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/Test/iris3d-bad.jpg
>> produced by:
>>
>> library(rgl)
>> data(iris)
>> col <-c("blue", "green", "red")[iris$Species]
>> plot3d(iris[,1:3], type="s", size=0.4, col=col, cex=2, box=FALSE,
>> aspect="iso")
>> (There should be variable labels and tick labels for the axes.)
>>
>> I've now tried everything I can think of, *both* with R 2.7.2 and R 2.7.1
>> - quitting and restarting R
>> - uninstalling R, and re-installing a fresh copy, with all my old
>> libraries (rgl_081)
>> - reboot and power-down/restart
>>
>> The problem persists, and I don't know what to look for to try to track
>> this down
>> and fix it. Some questions:
>> What might cause this to persist, even after reinstalling R?
>> Could there be any interaction between rgl.dll and anything else on my
>> system?
>> Is anyone brave enough to see if this problem [with rgl_081.708] is
>> reproducible?
>> If not reproducible, then it is something on my system.  If it is, could
>> there be
>> a problem with the build process on R-Forge for building rgl with png
>> support?
>> I've contacted the package maintainer, but he has no suggestions.
>>
>> R> sessionInfo()
>> R version 2.7.2 (2008-08-25)
>> i386-pc-mingw32
>>
>> locale:
>> LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United
>> States.1252;LC_MONETARY=English_United
>> States.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
>>
>> attached base packages:
>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>>
>> other attached packages:
>> [1] foreign_0.8-29 rgl_0.81       heplots_0.8-0  car_1.2-8
>>
>> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>> [1] tools_2.7.2
>> R>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Michael Friendly     Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca
>> Professor, Psychology Dept.
>> York University      Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814
>> 4700 Keele Street    http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/friendly.html
>> Toronto, ONT  M3J 1P3 CANADA
>>
>> ______________________________________________
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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.
>>     
>
>
>   


-- 
Michael Friendly     Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca 
Professor, Psychology Dept.
York University      Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814
4700 Keele Street    http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/friendly.html
Toronto, ONT  M3J 1P3 CANADA