[R-SIG-Mac] RGtk, rattle, and GTK+ on Snow Leopard and Lion

Wed Oct 5 21:38:28 CEST 2011

On Oct 5, 2011, at 3:19 PM, Robert Chatfield wrote:

> Do I understand the implications of previous messages about
> rattle correctlly?
> 
> => Do I also need to use homebrew and to a full R install as is implied for Lion?
> 

Just to clarify some misinformation in that thread so far:

The issue has nothing to do with the OS X version, you can happily use RGtk2 and other GTK-based packages with the CRAN setup, regardless is you're on Lion, SL, or Leopard. The problem is that recent rattle requires higher GTK version that what's available, so you're on your own.

Also note that Erich's description was about *native* GTK which is somewhat experimental (use at your own risk!), it is not about the X11 GTK we use in R distribution.

The reference to Homebrew was quite irrelevant for the reasons you noted.

We may consider updating the GTK binary for R 2.14.0, but it's certainly not high on the priority list.

Cheers,
Simon

> Bob  C
> 
> This is what I've read
> R-SIG-Mac Digest, Vol 89, Issue 7   1.  Error messages when starting Rattle (Richard R. Liu)
>> (R:1683): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to find default local directory monitor type
> 
> =>  I get the same message: (R:1683): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to find default local directory monitor type
> 
> => I have been able to get Rattle to start, but it will do very little; does not respond to most buttons.
> 
> => 6-core Xeon 2.66 GHz   OS X 10.6.8   R.2.13.2  rattlev 2.6.10
> 
>> I get
>>> library(rattle)
>> Rattle: A free graphical interface for data mining with R.
>> Version 2.6.10 Copyright (c) 2006-2011 Togaware Pty Ltd.
>> Type 'rattle()' to shake, rattle, and roll your data. 
>>> rattle(csvname="organics.csv")
>> Error in rattle(csvname = "organics.csv") : attempt to apply non-function
>> In addition: Warning message:
>> In method(obj, ...) :
>>  /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.13/Resources/library/rattle/etc/rattle.ui: required gtk+ version 2.20, current version is 2.18
>> Rattle timestamp (for the message above): 2011-10-05 12:15:51
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>> rattle()
>> Error in rattle() : attempt to apply non-function
>> In addition: Warning message:
>> In method(obj, ...) :
>>  /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.13/Resources/library/rattle/etc/rattle.ui: required gtk+ version 2.20, current version is 2.18
>> Rattle timestamp (for the message above): 2011-10-05 12:16:07
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> R-SIG-Mac Digest, Vol 97, Issue 11   3. Re:  R editor for Mac (Simon Urbanek)
>> 
>>> 
>>>> Just a tiny, technical side-comment:  it uses a separate process for R which has serious technical implications (you can't use any GUIs, external UI libraries, or even native devices like Quartz for example - it leads to crashes).
>>> 
>>> Can you expand on that, Simon? Crashes when using Quartz would seem like an immediate deal-breaker for Mac OS X users. Does that mean that ordinary plotting calls would cause crashes?
>>> 
>> 
>> They don't use Quartz - they have their own re-implementation of Cairo which creates files which is what gets displayed in the GUI - the GUI doesn't actually use the R device directly. It's entirely different from what you get in regular R. Unfortunately it means you can't use Quartz which is already a deal-breaker for me.
>> 
>> 
>>> I was assuming that users of RStudio would not be also using other GUI's, but I do not know whether I am using "external UI libraries" in my typical R activities using rms/Hmisc/survival. Is this in reference to packages such as rgl that invoke libraries such as GTK? Are Rattle or rggobi precluded as packages?
>>> 
>> 
>> In principle, yes (but I'd think that if you use Rattle it's pointless to have another GUI ;)). The actual interaction depends on the details inside their rsession part - so I can't comment on that and I didn't test the packages you mention. The bottom line is that all packages are run outside the GUI in an R embedding.
>> 
>> If I get a spare minute, I'm actually tempted to hack RStudio to remedy this design problem, because it would allow for example iPlots eXtreme to be used directly in the GUI which the current setup doesn't allow.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Simon
> 
> R-SIG-Mac Digest, Vol 103, Issue 24
>  5. Re:  RGtk, rattle, and GTK+ on Lion (Charlie Sharpsteen)
>> ...
>> Message: 5
>> Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 21:17:40 -0700
>> From: Charlie Sharpsteen <charles.sharpsteen at gmail.com>
>> To: <r-sig-mac at googlegroups.com>
>> Cc: r-sig-mac at stat.math.ethz.ch
>> Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] RGtk, rattle, and GTK+ on Lion
>> Message-ID:
>> 	<12675195.1573.1317010660824.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums at prhv38>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>> 
>> On Sunday, September 25, 2011 6:12:08 AM UTC-7, Erich Neuwirth wrote:
>>> 
>> ....  omitted quote 
>> A package manager could help with this.
>> 
>> For example, install Homebrew:
>> 
>> http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew
>> 
>> Install GFortran and R:
>> 
>> brew install gfortran
>> brew install R
>> 
>> You might be able to skip this step and use the R binaries from CRAN---the 
>> only caveat I can think of is that Homebrew doesn't build a Universal GTK+ 
>> (it gives you x86_64) and CRAN R might want to build both i386 and x86_64 
>> versions of packages.
>> 
>> Install GTK+:
>> 
>> brew install gtk+
>> 
>> Run R and install rattle:
>> 
>> install.packages('rattle')
>> 
>> Hope this helps!
>> 
>> -Charlie
> 
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