[R] snapshot3d hangs during rmarkdown::render

[Duncan Murdoch]

I've seen this recently as well.  I've done a bunch of updating recently 
(R to 4.1.0, chromote to the latest devel version, Chrome to a new 
release) and it's probably related to one of those, but I'm not sure 
which.  What I've found is that the lockup occurs in chromote, and 
that's suspicious but not necessarily proof of the source of the problem.

Do you have the same problems if you install the older file

https://github.com/dmurdoch/drat/blob/gh-pages/src/contrib/chromote_0.0.0.9002.tar.gz

?

Duncan Murdoch

On 10/06/2021 4:42 a.m., David Waterman wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I tried subscribing to the list yesterday, but this does not appear to
> have been successful. Therefore I am hoping this message meets
> volunteer moderator approval.
> 
> I have problems using snapshot3d from rgl while trying to render an R
> Markdown page. I want to do this to capture static snapshots of an
> interactive widget on the page. I had this working with an earlier
> version of R (sorry, forgot which), but this now hangs indefinitely at
> the snapshot3d call.
> 
> Should I expect this to work? I can successfully create a snapshot
> from an interactive R session with either webshot=TRUE or FALSE, just
> not from within my R Markdown build.
> 
> I have created a simple reproducer, which I attempt to build using:
> 
> library(rmarkdown)
> rmarkdown::render("reproducer.Rmd")
> 
> where the contents of reproducer.Rmd are:
> 
> $ cat reproducer.Rmd
> ---
> title: "rgl test"
> output:
>    html_document:
>      toc: true
>      toc_float:
>        toc_collapsed: true
> ---
> 
> ```{r, setup, echo=FALSE}
> library(rgl)
> library(knitr)
> knitr::knit_hooks$set(webgl = hook_webgl)
> ```
> 
> ### Insert rgl figure
> 
> Test
> 
> ```{r, webgl=TRUE, echo=FALSE}
> with(iris, plot3d(Sepal.Length, Sepal.Width, Petal.Length,
>                    type="s", col=as.numeric(Species)))
> snapshot3d("foo.png")
> rglwidget()
> rgl.close()
> ```
> ### END
> 
> Information about my R session:
> 
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18)
> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> Running under: Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS
> 
> Matrix products: default
> BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.7.1
> LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.7.1
> 
> locale:
>   [1] LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
>   [3] LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_GB.UTF-8
>   [5] LC_MONETARY=en_GB.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8
>   [7] LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
>   [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> 
> other attached packages:
> [1] webshot2_0.0.0.9000 chromote_0.0.0.9003 rmarkdown_2.8
> [4] rgl_0.106.8         knitr_1.33
> 
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>   [1] Rcpp_1.0.6              digest_0.6.27           later_1.2.0
>   [4] mime_0.10               R6_2.5.0                lifecycle_1.0.0
>   [7] xtable_1.8-4            jsonlite_1.7.2          magrittr_2.0.1
> [10] evaluate_0.14           rlang_0.4.11            miniUI_0.1.1.1
> [13] promises_1.2.0.1        ellipsis_0.3.2          tools_4.1.0
> [16] manipulateWidget_0.11.0 htmlwidgets_1.5.3       crosstalk_1.1.1
> [19] shiny_1.6.0             fastmap_1.1.0           httpuv_1.6.1
> [22] xfun_0.23               compiler_4.1.0          htmltools_0.5.1.1
> 
> I got R from an Ubuntu package:
> 
> $ dpkg -s r-base-core|head
> Package: r-base-core
> Status: install ok installed
> Priority: optional
> Section: gnu-r
> Installed-Size: 40697
> Maintainer: Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd using debian.org>
> Architecture: amd64
> Source: r-base
> Version: 4.1.0-1.1804.0
> Replaces: r-base (<= 1.4.1-1), r-base-latex (<= 2.9.2-4),
> r-cran-rcompgen (<= 0.1-17-1), r-gnome (<= 2.3.1), r-recommended (<<
> 1.9.0)
> 
> which came from here:
> 
> $ grep "r-project" /etc/apt/sources.list
> deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran40/
> # deb-src https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran40/
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> David Waterman
> STFC Computational Scientist
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>