[R-SIG-Mac] svg & cairo support in 2.12.2 and higher?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Try running 32-bit R on your platform: it does contain cairo support.
(So does my own x86_64 build of 2.13.0: looks like there is/was a 
problem on the CRAN build machine. So you could also build R from the 
sources.)

On Wed, 13 Apr 2011, Sarah Berke wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm not sure if this is the best list for my question, so please let
> me know if I should direct this elsewhere.
>
> When I used R version 2.12.0 on my Mac (Platform:
> x86_64-apple-darwin9.8.0/x86_64 (64-bit)), I often used svg() to
> create graphics which I then edited in Inkscape.  When I updated to
> 2.12.2, the code that worked in 2.12.0 started returning an error,
> "cairo-based devices are not supported on this build".  Same problem
> in 2.13 released today.  And indeed, capabilities() returns FALSE for
> cairo, whereas it used to be TRUE.
>
> I tried using {RSvgDev}, but (1) I don't like that I cannot specify a
> pointsize, (2) it ignores any color specification of text (gray text
> is turned into black), and (3) the vectors come out aliased (i.e., an
> 'L' shaped vector becomes pixellated at the angle).  svg() did not
> suffer from any of these problems.
>
> I also tried installing {cairoDevice}, but when I try to load it I get this:
>
>> require (cairoDevice)
> Loading required package: cairoDevice
> Error in dyn.load(file, DLLpath = DLLpath, ...) :
>  unable to load shared object
> '/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.13/Resources/library/cairoDevice/libs/x86_64/cairoDevice.so':
>  dlopen(/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.13/Resources/library/cairoDevice/libs/x86_64/cairoDevice.so,
> 6): Library not loaded:
> /Library/Frameworks/GTK+.framework/Versions/2.18.X11/Resources/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.0.dylib
>  Referenced from:
> /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.13/Resources/library/cairoDevice/libs/x86_64/cairoDevice.so
>  Reason: image not found
>
> For now I have reverted to 2.12.0, but I was wondering if there is any
> way to build 2.13 with Cairo capabilities, or if anyone has advice for
> getting better-quality svg's in R?
>
> Many thanks,
> Sarah
>
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-- 
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