[R] tiff() woes

[Federico Calboli]

On 17 Jun 2009, at 18:15, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 05:29:26PM +0100, Federico Calboli wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> a friend has a problem with tiff() which I was unable to help  
>> about. I
>> searched the error messages to no avail. When he tries:
>>
>> tiff(filename = "FedeWhyDoesntThisBloodyWork.tif", width = 5,  
>> height =
>> 5, units = "cm", bg = "white", res = 1200)
>> Error in tiff(filename = "FedeWhyDoesntThisBloodyWork.tif", width =  
>> 5,  :
>> unable to start device
>> In addition: Warning messages:
>> 1: In tiff(filename = "FedeWhyDoesntThisBloodyWork.tif", width =  
>> 5,  :
>> Unable to allocate bitmap
>> 2: In tiff(filename = "FedeWhyDoesntThisBloodyWork.tif", width =  
>> 5,  :
>> opening device failed
>>
>> Same for
>>
>> tiff(filename = "FedeWhyDoesntThisBloodyWork.tif", width = 20,  
>> height =
>> 20, units = "cm", bg = "white", res = 300)
>> Error in tiff(filename = "FedeWhyDoesntThisBloodyWork.tif", width =  
>> 5,  :
>> unable to start device
>> In addition: Warning messages:
>> 1: In tiff(filename = "FedeWhyDoesntThisBloodyWork.tif", width =  
>> 5,  :
>> Unable to allocate bitmap
>> 2: In tiff(filename = "FedeWhyDoesntThisBloodyWork.tif", width =  
>> 5,  :
>> opening device failed
>>
>> This second example runs on my Mac (I did not try the first), so we  
>> are
>> at loss why windows would not run the very same code. Any ideas? I  
>> can
>> see that setting the resolution very high (as for the forst example)
>> might not work, but the *windows only* failure of the second  
>> example is
>> strange. I suspect cairo *could* be an issue, but that's as far as  
>> I can
>> guess on sobody else's intallation.
>
> Does   capabilities("tiff")   return TRUE ?


I checked on the affected computer and both tiff and cairo capabiliies  
return FALSE. How that is I would not know, it's a bog standard R  
installation on windows XP.

F


--
Federico C. F. Calboli
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health
Imperial College, St. Mary's Campus
Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG

Tel +44 (0)20 75941602   Fax +44 (0)20 75943193

f.calboli [.a.t] imperial.ac.uk
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