[R-SIG-Mac] Cairo / X11 problem in Mavericks

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 29/10/2013 01:20, Jeroen Ooms wrote:
>>> R exists with a warning that X11 is required.
>> You need to re-install XQuartz after an update.  See the R-admin manual.
>
> I'm not sure I understand (apologies, I'm not really a mac user). We
> are using these devices in non-interactive R sessions (RApache,
> RScript). So the Cairo devices can only be used on machines that have
> xquartz is installed? IIRC, we had some mac server at some point that
> did not have xquartz but was still capable of generating cairo based
> svg and png. The r-admin manual says "cairo support (without Pango)
> has been added to the binary distribution".
>
>
>>> Is there any way to use png() or svg() on Mavericks without installing xquartz?
>> png() yes: use the quartz-based device.
>
> Well part of the problem is that even running capabilities() to see if
> Cairo is available at all makes R exit. Is this really expected
> behavior?
>
Yes, if you are using the CRAN binary distribution of R which was built 
against Apple X11.

-- 
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