[R] Font Path question

[James W. MacDonald]

I am having weird problems where more recent installs of R cannot find 
the Font path. I don't have sudo access, so install R in my personal 
directory on an Ubuntu box, from source.

$ ls -lah R-3.0.1/bin/ | grep -w R
-rwxr-xr-x  1 jmacdon staff 8.5K Aug 30 14:04 R
$ ls -lah R-3.0.2/bin/ | grep -w R
-rwxr-xr-x  1 jmacdon staff 8.5K Sep 26 09:24 R
$ ls -lah R-2.15.1/bin/ | grep -w R
-rwxr-xr-x  1 jmacdon staff 8.5K Dec 19 12:58 R
$ ls -lah R-devel/bin/ | grep -w R
-rwxr-xr-x  1 jmacdon staff 8.5K Feb 11 09:47 R

Neither R-2.15.1 nor R-devel can find the Font Path, but R-3.0.1 and 
R-3.0.2 can:

 > plot(1:10) ## no problems here
 > sessionInfo()
R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25)
Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
  [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods base


 > plot(1:10)   #urgh
Error in axis(side = side, at = at, labels = labels, ...) :
   could not find any X11 fonts
Check that the Font Path is correct.
 > sessionInfo()
R Under development (unstable) (2014-02-10 r64961)
Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
  [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods base

Any suggestions as to how I might track this down?

Best,

Jim

-- 
James W. MacDonald, M.S.
Biostatistician
University of Washington
Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
4225 Roosevelt Way NE, # 100
Seattle WA 98105-6099