[R] cairoDevice.dll error, but it exists..?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Most likely you did not install the dependent DLLs: you need Gtk2 
(aka GTk+) installed *and in your path*.

That message does not say that 'cairoDevice.dll' cannot be loaded, but 
a DLL it specified: in interactive use on recent versions of Windows 
you normally get a pop-up with more information.

The CRAN windows/contrib/2.9 ReadMe says

   Package RGtk2 requires an installed version of Gtk2 with version
   number >= 2.10.11.

and I believe something similar is true of cairoDevice by the same 
author.  A good source of a pre-compiled Gtk2 is
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gladewin32/ , and I guess you need
gtk-2.12.9-win32-2.exe from gtk+-win32-runtime.

If you insist on using a toolkit designed for Unix on Windows you can 
expect a rough ride: even when all the Gtk2 components are installed 
there are lots of issues with fonts.


On Mon, 25 May 2009, zubin wrote:

> Hello, running windows vista, R2.9.  Installed the following libraries:
> (*latticist*, *playwith* and *Cairo*)
>
> Wanted then to run, to evaluate the visualization features:
>
>> data(iris)
>
>> library(latticist)
>
>> latticist(iris)
>
>
> However, i tested my desktop and laptop and get the following error
> after typing latticist(iris):
>
> latticist(iris)
> Loading required package: playwith
> Loading required package: cairoDevice
> Error in inDL(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now), ...) :
> unable to load shared library
> 'C:/Users/luna/Documents/R/win-library/2.9/cairoDevice/libs/cairoDevice.dll':
> LoadLibrary failure:  The specified module could not be found.
>
> Error: package 'cairoDevice' could not be loaded
>
>
>
> However, i navigate to the location in the path above and i do see the
> cairoDevice.dll file, so i can't figure out what's going on.  Again, i
> tested 2 machines, with R2.9 and Vista, same error on both.
>
> -zubin
>
>

-- 
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