[R-SIG-Mac] rgl window problem

Simon Urbanek simon.urbanek at r-project.org
Wed Dec 6 19:19:24 CET 2006 

On Dec 6, 2006, at 11:09 AM, roger koenker wrote:

> I'm still a bit lost...  It is true that I'm still using X11 to run R
> but I would
> be happy to use the GUI -- in fact I have used it a bit from my laptop
> for teaching purposes, but on my desktop I'm in need of building
> packages from source and haven't managed to see my way clear
> to using the binary versions that Simon is providing.  So ....
>
> I tried just downloading the GUI from  Simon's ATT page.  When
> this starts up, I get:
>
>
> Error in checkConflicts(value) : unimplemented type 'character' in
> 'asLogical'
> Error in seq_along(specs) : argument is not interpretable as logical
> Error in gzfile(file) : invalid 'encoding' argument
> [Workspace restored from /Users/roger/.RData]
>
> and library(rgl)  doesn't produce any messages, but neither does it
> do anything
> in response to example(suface3d) except return a prompt.  This also
> happens
> with other packages:  no complaints on loading, but no response from
> attempts
> to use the package, and search indicates that the packages aren't in
> the search
> list.  When R starts up it says it is running:
>
> 	R version 2.4.0 Under development (unstable) (2006-08-16 r38905)
>
> but this isn't the version that I'm running from my X11 windows...as
> noted below.
>

Oh, wow, your system is a mess ;). You appear to have at least two  
different versions of R on your system and neither of them is the  
CRAN build, so you are be pretty much on your own :P. In addition, it  
seems as if you have custom packages installed in ~/Library/R as  
well, which adds to the chaos, because they don't know about the  
concept of R versions and thus break very often (I suspect this is  
where your errors at start time come from).

Now to your actual problem - it seems that you want to run R-devel  
instead of R 2.4.0 (if you don't, just install R 2.4.0 from CRAN and  
everyone's happy). In that case, you must also run R.app (the GUI)  
suitable for R-devel. Running R.app built for R 2.4 won't work. I  
have just noticed that the R.app failed to build for R-devel due to  
an API change, so that's why it was not available from my page. I  
have now fixed that problem and the GUI should be available for R- 
devel as well.

Cheers,
Simon


> url:    www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger            Roger Koenker
> email    rkoenker at uiuc.edu            Department of Economics
> vox:     217-333-4558                University of Illinois
> fax:       217-244-6678                Champaign, IL 61820
>
>
> On Dec 6, 2006, at 9:14 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>
>> On 12/6/2006 9:51 AM, stefano iacus wrote:
>>> we usually use .Platform$GUI to check if we are under R.app or
>>> under  the console
>>> Un R.app .Platform$GUI="AQUA", under terminal it is set to
>>> "X11" (if  R is built with X11 support, which is the case of CRAN
>>> binary)
>>> stefano
>>> p.s. and this is Cocoa not Carbon. The OS X GUI itself is called
>>> AQUA  though. Both Cocoa and Carbon are layers between the system
>>> and the  AQUA GUI. So, definitely AQUA but not Carbon.
>>
>> Thanks.  I'll see if I can put in a test based on .Platform$GUI.
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>> On 06/dic/06, at 23:08, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>>>> On 12/6/2006 8:43 AM, roger koenker wrote:
>>>>> I've recently installed rgl on a:
>>>>>
>>>>> R version 2.5.0 Under development (unstable) (2006-09-10 r39242)
>>>>> powerpc-apple-darwin8.7.0
>>>>>
>>>>> system, from source and everything seemed to be ok, the package
>>>>> loads without complaints, however  trying to run any of the
>>>>> examples
>>>>> produces the usual window, but no plotting occurs.  The window
>>>>> is blank, and moving the cursor over the window gives the dreaded
>>>>> spinning pinwheel of cluelessness.
>>>>>
>>>>> Can anyone suggest a strategy for further diagnosis?
>>>>
>>>> This sounds as though you are running from the console rather than
>>>> R.app, but have built rgl (or downloaded a copy built) to use  
>>>> AGL in
>>>> Carbon rather than X11.  That doesn't work.  AGL calls only work
>>>> from R.app.
>>>>
>>>> If someone knows a nice run-time test for whether Carbon will
>>>> work I'd
>>>> put it in to at least give a meaningful error message.  I'd really
>>>> prefer it to fall back to trying X11 in that case, but that looks
>>>> much
>>>> harder:  for an OSX newbie like me, I think the AGL/X11 decision
>>>> needs
>>>> to be done at link time, not run time.  (On Windows I'd load the
>>>> appropriate OpenGL .dll when the package loaded, and do all the
>>>> calls
>>>> indirectly.  But I don't know how to do this on OSX.)
>>>>
>>>> If my assumption in the first paragraph is wrong, please let me
>>>> know.
>>>> And if "Carbon" is the wrong name for the graphics system that
>>>> supports
>>>> the standard Mac GUI and AGL, I wouldn't mind hearing that either.
>>>>
>>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> R-SIG-Mac mailing list
>>>> R-SIG-Mac at stat.math.ethz.ch
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>
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