[R] rgl::writeWebGL( , prefix = , )

Tue Feb 3 17:15:23 CET 2015

Thanks Duncan, your suggestions led me to a solution.

Perhaps this could be reflected in the help, but I'll leave that 
decision to you.

It comes down to the template. As well as including a single line for 
each scene containing
   paste("%", prefix, "WebGL%"); e.g. %WebGL% or %AWebGL%
the <body  > tag must contain an onload attribute with an element for 
each scene
   paste0(prefix, "webGLStart();")
e.g. <body onload="webGLStart(); AwebGLStart();">

While I'm suggesting additions to the help, it took me a little while to 
work out that when writing multiple scenes the result from one 
writeWebGL was the template for the next. E.g. in the above example with 
two scenes:

outfile <- writeWebGL(dir=getwd(), template = file.path(getwd(), 
"template.html"), prefix="")
# position to next scene
outfile <- writeWebGL(dir=getwd(), template = outfile, prefix="A")

Thanks for your help (and a really nice package!)

Keith J

On 03/02/2015 15:14, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 03/02/2015 9:43 AM, Keith.Jewell at campdenbri.co.uk wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I am using writeWebGL to create an HTML page containing an interactive
>> 3D plot. It works fine with the default prefix="" but fails when I
>> specify a prefix "for different scenes displayed on the same web page"
>> (quoting ?writeWebGL).  I'm sure I'm misreading the help, and would
>> appreciate guidance.
>>
>> Briefly, it works fine with the default writeWebGL( ,prefix="", ) and
>> the template containing %WebGL%
>> I have not been able to make it work with any other value of prefix;
>> e.g. writeWebGL( ,prefix="A",) and the template containing %AWebGL%
>>
>> Here is code illustrating the problem.
>>
>> First create three templates:
>> a) Vanilla: copied system.file(file.path("WebGL", "template.html"),
>> package="rgl") to file.path(getwd(), "template.html")
>>
>> b) First attempt: ?writeWebGL says # "[the template] should contain a
>> single line containing paste("%", prefix, "WebGL%"), e.g. %WebGL% with
>> the default empty prefix"
>> paste("%", "A", "WebGL%")
>> # [1] "% A WebGL%"
>> so file.path(getwd(), "templateA.html") is a copy of (a) replacing
>> %WebGL% with % A WebGL%
>>
>> c) Second attempt: file.path(getwd(), "templateB.html") is  a copy of
>> (a) replacing %WebGL% with %AWebGL%
>>
>> then, in R
>> #-----------
>> library(rgl)
>> plot3d(1:5, 1:5, 1:5) # generate rgl scene
>> #-----------
>> # a) vanilla
>> writeWebGL(dir=getwd(), template = file.path(getwd(),
>> "template.html"), prefix="")
>> # works OK; result opens and works in IE
>> #----------------
>> # b) First attempt, my reading of ?writeWebGL
>> writeWebGL(dir=getwd(), template = file.path(getwd(),
>> "templateA.html"), prefix="A")
>> # Error in writeWebGL(dir = getwd(), template = file.path(getwd(),
>> "templateA.html"),  :
>> #                       template ‘m://templateA.html’ does not contain
>> %AWebGL%
>> # so it looks as if the help is trivially wrong, it should be paste0
>> paste0("%", "A", "WebGL%")
>
> Yes, that's right.  I'll fix it.
>
>> # [1] "%AWebGL%"
>> #----------------
>> # c) second attempt using %AWebGL%
>> writeWebGL(dir=getwd(), template = file.path(getwd(),
>> "templateB.html"), prefix="A")
>> # runs without error in R but IE displays "You must enable Javascript
>> to view this page properly."
>> #--------------
>>
>> I don't understand why (c) is different from (a).
>
> There may be an error in the generated Javascript.  In Firefox, you
> could ask to see the browser console log, and it would report if there
> was an error on the page; sometimes those make the Javascript fail, and
> it falls back to the error message you saw.  I don't know how/if you can
> do that in IE.
>
>
>>
>> Here are the system details:
>>
>> R version 3.1.0 (2014-04-10)
>> Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
>>
>> locale:
>> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United Kingdom.1252
>> [2] LC_CTYPE=English_United Kingdom.1252
>> [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United Kingdom.1252
>> [4] LC_NUMERIC=C
>> [5] LC_TIME=English_United Kingdom.1252
>>
>> attached base packages:
>> [1] grDevices datasets  splines   graphics  stats     tcltk     utils
>>   [8] tools     methods   base
>>
>> other attached packages:
>> [1] knitr_1.8       animation_2.3   rgl_0.95.1158   CBRIutils_1.0
>
> That's an old version of rgl; current on CRAN is 0.95.1201.
> <http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/rgl_0.95.1201.tar.gz> (CRAN OSX
> currently has an old binary; I don't recommend that you use it.  I don't
> know why they haven't updated to the current one.) r-forge has even
> newer versions, but I'm in the middle of some changes there, so I don't
> recommend using that version right now.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
> <http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/rgl_0.95.1201.tar.gz>
>>   [5] stringr_0.6.2   svSocket_0.9-55 TinnR_1.0-5     R2HTML_2.3.1
>>   [9] Hmisc_3.12-2    Formula_1.1-1   survival_2.37-7
>>
>> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>> [1] cluster_1.15.3  devtools_1.6.1  evaluate_0.5.5  formatR_1.0
>> [5] grid_3.1.0      highr_0.4       lattice_0.20-29 rpart_4.1-8
>> [9] svMisc_0.9-70
>>
>> Internet Explorer 11 Version 11.0.9600.17420
>>
>> Any advice is welcome.
>>
>>
>> Keith Jewell - Statistician
>> Tel: +44 (0)1386 842055
>> Web:  www.campdenbri.co.uk
>> Email:  keith.jewell at campdenBRI.co.uk
>>
>> Campden BRI (Chipping Campden) Limited - part of the Campden BRI group
>> Station Road ♦ Chipping Campden ♦ Gloucestershire ♦ GL55 6LD ♦ UK