[R-SIG-Mac] graphics device with record=TRUE

[Simon Urbanek]

On Jul 5, 2012, at 1:44 PM, Richard M. Heiberger wrote:

> thank you again.
> 
> I have a request for Simon.
> 
> On the windows machines, the R and Windows FAQ are both in
> c:/Program Files/R/R-2.15.1/doc
> Hence I looked for the Mac FAQ in the same place as the R FAQ on Mac.
> 
> On windows, searchpaths() gives a list of items like
> "c:/Program Files/R/R-2.15.1/library/base"
> which gives a starting directory in which to look.
> 
> On the Mac, search paths() gives
> "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/library/base"
> which in this case was not helpful for finding the Mac FAQ.
> 
> Can you set up a symbolic link from
> /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.15/Resources/doc
> to point to /Applications/R.app/Contents/Resources?

No, because it is not fixed. The FAQ is part of the GUI and thus in the GUI bundle. It has nothing to do with R and R can exist (and does) without the GUI so you can't link to it from R. It is trivially accessible directly form the Help menu - I don't see how it can be more obvious=.


> That will make it easier for the next person converting from windows to mac.
> 

Well, it certainly doesn't make sense to introduce Windows idiosyncrasies to Mac - if you convert to Mac you will need to buy into the "just-works" philosophy. If you are trying to recreate your Windows environment, you have already failed and should go back :).

Cheers,
Simon


> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 11:59 AM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> On Jul 5, 2012, at 10:58 AM, Richard M. Heiberger wrote:
> 
>> It is interesting to compare working styles.  I am not "up to" anything.  I am trying
>> to recreate in Mac the standard working style I use in R on windows and also in S-Plus on windows.  I just keep the complete graph history until it complains about lack of memory.
>> In S-Plus, it is possible to delete individual plots.  In R on windows I haven't found an easy
>> way to do that, so I just delete the R object containing the entire history.  When I adjust
>> arguments to xyplot or plot it is very helpful to be able to back up and see what the previous
>> incarnation of the graph looked like.
>> 
>> Where is "R MacOSX FAQ"?  I don't see it on my computer inside /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/
>> I am using R-2.15.1 from CRAN.
> 
> I use the Help menu in the GUI when I want to look at it. It will also be the first google hit on search using " r mac faq".
> 
> A bit of messing around with links in the displayed copy shows that I am looking at:
> 
> file:///Applications/R64.app/Contents/Resources/RMacOSX-FAQ.html
> 
> 
>> 
>> What is GEcreateSnapshot?  I tried ?, emacs apropos, and man with no success.
>> 
>> Where is the display list kept on the mac?  ls(all=TRUE) isn't showing it.
>> On windows, it is 
>> > ls(all=TRUE)
>> [1] ".SavedPlots"
>> 
>> When I do find the display list on the mac, how can I index into it farther back than 16?
>> 
>> What I would like are two features that I have become accustomed to.
>> From either R on windows or S-Plus, click graphs forward or backward in sequence as far back as memory supports.
>> From S-Plus on windows, click on a tab to get to a specific graph, or click on a tab and delete
>> a specific graph.
>> 
>> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 10:01 AM, Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org> wrote:
>> 
>> On Jul 5, 2012, at 9:42 AM, David Winsemius wrote:
>> 
>> >
>> > On Jul 4, 2012, at 11:47 PM, Richard M. Heiberger wrote:
>> >
>> >> David,
>> >>
>> >> thank you.  it works.
>> >>
>> >> Where is it documented?
>> >
>> > The first place I find written documentation of the cmd-arrow
>> > functions  is in the R MacOSX FAQ:
>> > 12.8 Why are Quartz plots much bigger than they used to be?
>> > (Second paragraph)
>> >
>> > (I may have read about the stack depth in one of the postings from
>> > Simon in this venue. The figure of ten is a rough guess. The true
>> > value is somewhere  in the range of 8 to 15.)
>> >
>> >> I want to set the depth to something much larger than 10.
>> >
>> > I have not found a place for users to change this. May be that a
>> > compile time change is needed. (Simon will hopefully correct me if
>> > this is wrong.)
>> >
>> 
>> R-devel/src/library/grDevices/src/qdCocoa.m at 37:
>> 
>> #define histsize 16
>> 
>> so, yes, it is hard-coded in R.
>> 
>> It is not part of the R.app GUI but actually of the Quartz device in R itself so it is not configurable.
>> 
>> It simply saves display lists and replays them as you go back - you can do that with any device that has display lists enabled (see dev.control). I'm not sure what Rich is up to but you can always save and restore plots with GEcreateSnapshot and GEplayDisplayList regardless of the device and the display list is just an R object. Keeping more than 16 plots seems a little tedious to go through ...
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Simon
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > I tried searching MarkMail's archive with a couple of strategies, ...
>> > the last unsuccessful one was:
>> >
>> > http://markmail.org/search/?q=simon+urbanek+list%3Aorg.r-project.r-sig-mac+graphics+increase#query
>> > :simon%20urbanek%20list%3Aorg.r-project.r-sig-mac%20graphics%20increase
>> > +page:2+mid:ykmzj6mwesj3wywu+state:results
>> >
>> > (I don't know if that will be paste-worthy or click-worthy.)
>> >
>> >
>> >> I don't see anything about the stack on the ?quartz page
>> >> and there appears not to be any control option on the quartz menu
>> >> item on the device
>> >> itself.
>> >
>> > If the Quartz window is the focus, the Quartz menu options will become
>> > active  and even if not the focus the menu will also tell you the
>> > keyboard equivalents (standard Mac behavior). I think that is where I
>> > learned it.
>> >
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Rich
>> >>
>> >> On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 11:35 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net
>> >>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Jul 4, 2012, at 11:12 PM, Richard M. Heiberger wrote:
>> >>
>> >> The windows feature I miss most on the Mac is a graphics device that
>> >> remembers the previous graphs,
>> >> specifically
>> >> windows.options(record=TRUE)  ## R for Windows
>> >>
>> >> Is there a similar feature available on the macintosh?
>> >>
>> >> There is a graphics stack, whose default depth is 10, and you can
>> >> scroll backward with cmd-<left-arrow>  ... at least in the R64.app
>> >> and r.app GUI's.
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> David Winsemius, MD
>> >> West Hartford, CT
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> > David Winsemius, MD
>> > West Hartford, CT
>> >
>> >
>> >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > R-SIG-Mac mailing list
>> > R-SIG-Mac at r-project.org
>> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>> >
>> >
>> 
>> 
> 
> David Winsemius, MD
> West Hartford, CT
> 
>