[R-sig-Debian] [R] fix and edit don't work: unable to open X Input

[Paul Johnson]

Thanks, Paul.

I'm not even sure r-sig-debian is the right place for me to whine
about this.  If other debian systems work, well, the problem can't be
the R package.

Checklist.

1. I'm not running R as root, nor am I remote (that was one suspicion)

2. Re-installed packages.  I configured a different CRAN repository,
at first I was encouraged because it seemed to be drawing in some
packages I was not aware of:


$ sudo apt-get install r-base r-base-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  cdbs dpatch gfortran libbz2-dev libjpeg8-dev libncurses5-dev libpcre3-dev
  libpcrecpp0 libreadline-dev libreadline6-dev libtinfo-dev patchutils
  r-base-html
Suggested packages:
  devscripts gfortran-multilib gfortran-doc ncurses-doc r-doc-info r-doc-pdf
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  cdbs dpatch gfortran libbz2-dev libjpeg8-dev libncurses5-dev libpcre3-dev
  libpcrecpp0 libreadline-dev libreadline6-dev libtinfo-dev patchutils r-base
  r-base-dev r-base-html
0 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 0 to remove and 8 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,877 kB of archives.
After this operation, 5,501 kB of additional disk space

================

Oh, well. Start R, what do you get?

> fix(warpbreaks)
Error in dataentry(datalist, modes) : invalid device
In addition: Warning message:
In edit.data.frame(get(subx, envir = parent), title = subx, ...) :
  unable to open X Input Method

Bummer.

> sessionInfo()
R version 2.14.1 (2011-12-22)
Platform: x86_64-pc-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=C                 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


3. Now, read the error message again. "X Input Method".

I've found the code where problem starts in R source.  I suspect my
locale and/or desktop environment and/or SCIM setup.  Here:

R-2.14.0/src/modules/X11/dataentry.c

  if(mbcslocale && DE->isEditor) {
        ioim = XOpenIM(iodisplay, NULL, NULL, NULL);
  if(!ioim) {
            XDestroyWindow(iodisplay, DE->iowindow);
            XCloseDisplay(iodisplay);
            warning("unable to open X Input Method");
            return TRUE;
        }

 XOpenIM has documentation, about complicated things like locale.
I'll report back if I find out what's wrong.

-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas