[R-SIG-Mac] Confused with default device setup

[Gang Chen]

Thanks a lot for the clarifications and helpful information, Prof.  
Ripley.

A related question along the line: The reason I wanted to have quartz  
instead of X11 was that quartz() automatically provides antialiasing  
effect when drawing lines when using dev.new(). I just noticed that  
on http://developer.r-project.org/blosxom.cgi/R-devel it says "dev.new 
() gains a '...' argument which can be used to passed named arguments  
which will be used if appropriate to the device selected". So does it  
mean I can expect that I could specify an option such as "antialias"  
in dev.new() in version 2.8.0 so that I would have antialiasing  
effect in case X11() is invoked?

Thanks again,
Gang


On Oct 15, 2008, at 5:54 PM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Oct 2008, Gang Chen wrote:
>
>> When invoking dev.new() on my Mac OS X 10.4.11, I get an X11 window
>> instead of quartz which I feel more desirable.  So I'd like to set
>> the default device to quartz. However I'm confused because of the
>> following:
>>
>> > Sys.getenv("R_DEFAULT_DEVICE")
>> R_DEFAULT_DEVICE
>>         "quartz"
>>
>> > getOption("device")
>> [1] "X11"
>>
>> What's going on?
>
> I don't know (it is your machine), but here's my guess ....
>
> I dom't see R_DEFAULT_DEVICE set on my Mac, but note that  
> R_INTERACTIVE_DEVICE takes precedence in interactive use.  So  
> something in your setup is different from mine, maybe some startup  
> files or R.app preferences?  The first diagnostic step is to see if  
> R_INTERACTIVE_DEVICE is set and why R_DEFAULT_DEVICE is set (and  
> see below for why the current setting is dangerous).
>
>> Also is file Renviron under /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/ 
>> Resources/
>> etc/ppc/ the one I should modify if I want to change some environment
>> variables? But I don't see R_DEFAULT_DEVICE there.
>
> As to where you should set it, it depends on who you want to set it  
> for, and how you run R (from R.app or from the command line).  But  
> Renviron is not the right place: a file Renviron.site in that  
> directory would be if you want a system-wide setting (see ? 
> Startup).  But do be careful, as if you make quartz the default for  
> remote interactive or batch sessions you are likely to get  
> undesirable behaviour (possibly even crashes for some R versions).   
> In short, don't set R_DEFAULT_DEVICE to an screen device.
>
>>
>> TIA,
>> Gang
>
> -- 
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595