[R] Problem with X11 device through screen over ssh within Emacs

[Simon White]

Dear R-help,

This is a bit of a long tale, involving R, Emacs, Screen and ssh.



I connect to our linux server for running R from my linux machine.
On our server, I use GNU Screen to keep persistent sessions.

Recently, I logged into the server using
ssh user at server
but forgot to include the -X switch to forward X.

I started a screen session,
in that, I opened Emacs, and started an instance of R within ESS.

After loading my data sets, I logged out.

The next day, I logged in using
ssh -X user at server

checked my DISPLAY variable (localhost:10.0),
reconnected my screen session using
screen -r
and set the DISPLAY variable - so, within screen, I can now open kcalc 
for example

Switching to the emacs window, in R, when I run
capabilities("X11")
 > FALSE

however, I then execute
X11.options(device="localhost:10.0")
to update R

then the command
X11()
opens a plot window....


However, dev.new() only opens a pdf device...

How can I tell R that there is now a valid X11 device and it should use it?


Thanks,

Simon