[R-SIG-Mac] cairoDevice and GTK under MacOS

[John Maindonald]

Arising from my recent interchange with Professor Ripley,
it seems that there is no current binary for cairoDevice
that works under R 2.11.0 or 2.11.1.  This is in spite of the
current CRAN package check results that have OK for
cairoDevice under r-release MacOS X ix86

With each new release of R (and maybe release of OSX), 
there seems a sizeable risk that the cairoDevice/GTK 
combination will fail.

Is cairoDevice/GTK  in for the long haul?  Or is it likely
to be superseded by other GUI interface approaches?
If it is in for the long haul, what are the odds of getting
quickly to a point where one can have confidence that
it will be usable under OSX when a new version of R 
appears?  

This is not a criticism of the excellent work that has gone
into building cairoDevice/GTK.  Restriction of some
software to some systems has to be accepted as a fact
of life, especially where there is a large element of
innovation.  Rather, it is a request for any insight that 
may be available from those on this list who have some 
limited ability to peer into the future, or even actual
knowledge of the future!

I guess that some part of the answer will in due course
come from commercial users of R.   What is available
on the Mac may become more important now that Google
is, apparently, giving up support internally for use of 
Windows systems.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d2f3f04e-6ccf-11df-91c8-00144feab49a.html

John Maindonald             email: john.maindonald at anu.edu.au
phone : +61 2 (6125)3473    fax  : +61 2(6125)5549
Centre for Mathematics & Its Applications, Room 1194,
John Dedman Mathematical Sciences Building (Building 27)
Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200.
http://www.maths.anu.edu.au/~johnm