[R-SIG-Mac] Rcmdr/tcltk help ...

[James Wettenhall]

Hi Ben,

I probably can't add much more to what Kasper has already said, but just
in case it helps, I'll give you my comments on what you have tried...

>    He installed R and I helped him install Rcmdr.
>    We looked at the FAQ and realized we needed to reinstall the OS to
> include X11.

Reinstalling the OS certainly sounds unnecessary.  If you don't already
have X11 in the Utilities folder of the (OSX) Applications folder, then
you should be able to install it from one of the CDs you got with your new
operating system.  And it's a good idea to install the Apple Developer
Tools (C/Fortran compilers etc.) and also the X11SDK (Software Development
Kit) from the Xcode tools CD.  Then you will be able to install open
source software like Tcl/Tk from source (i.e. from a .tar.gz bundle
containing C code).

>    We reinstalled R (which didn't work after the OS reinstall) and
> reinstalled Rcmdr.

R didn't work after the OS reinstall?  In what way didn't it work?  Did
you get an error message?

>    Then we got the following error (see below) from tcltk.

There are many ways to install Tcl/Tk on MacOSX and in fact you probably
already have an (Aqua) Tcl/Tk installed in /Library/Frameworks/ or
somewhere similar.  I have not had much success with fink.  I would
recommend either using the custom options in the R installation wizard to
install the Tcl/Tk bundled with R, or follow the instructions in the R for
MacOSX FAQ under the heading "X11 TclTk headers and libraries (optional)".

>    We downloaded fink.  Attempted to reinstall tcltk, apparently
> successfully.

Do you know where fink installed Tcl/Tk?  If it is in /sw/ ("software")
this could be a problem because R's tcltk package will expect it to be in
/usr/local/

As I said, I haven't had much success getting fink Tcl/Tk to work with R's
tcltk package, but I guess it should be possible.  You can try all the
usual diagnostic tests - can you run wish, the Tcl interpreter, from the
command line?  Can you run X11 OK?  Does the x11() function in R work
(when X11 is running)? etc.

>     Still getting the error message.
>    (We're starting R from a terminal window on the advice of a
> message somewhere in the R archives.)

That shouldn't be necessary to run R-Tcl/Tk stuff on MacOSX.

>    I'm feeling on a bit of a downward spiral here ...  I wanted this
> to be a "see, open source software can solve all your problems and
> it's easy to get started ..." experience and that's not how it's
> turning out.

I've certainly had that experience before :-)  But I haven't given up on
the open-source/platform-independent universe yet!

Hope this helps,
James