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further on ESS/XEmacs for Windows

4 messages · A.J. Rossini, John Fox, Marc Schwartz

Original
John Fox
# 
Dear list members,

I've had helpful feedback from a number of people, several of whom 
experienced some problems getting my XEmacs/ESS configuration files for 
Windows to work properly. I will, of course, make changes based on this 
feedback, but the following information may be of use in the interim:

(1) It's clear that my instructions and installation procedure were 
insufficiently flexible. In particular, putting the .xemacs configuration 
directory in c:\ caused some problems:

     On Windows 9x systems, it's necessary to have the environment variable 
HOME point to the directory in which .xemacs is located; for example, if 
this directory is in c:\, place the line

   set HOME=c:\

in the autoexec.bat file. As well, the proper way to redefine the path is

   path=%path%;"c:\program files\r\rw1061\bin"

(or wherever rterm.exe is). Again, this line goes in autoexec.bat.

     In Windows NT, 2000, or XP, if there is no HOME environment variable 
(the usual case), then XEmacs uses HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH to locate the 
.xemacs configuration directory. To see where XEmacs is looking, open a 
command prompt (DOS) window and type

   echo %homedrive%%homepath%

If the answer isn't c:\, then you can either move the .xemacs directory 
accordingly or define HOME=c:\

     As well, having my self-extracting archive try to place files in the 
right places was a mistake, I believe, since the locations are 
XEmacs-version dependent.

     These problems are easily dealt with, I believe, and I apologize for 
any frustration that my (poor) initial choices produced.

(2) I spent a good part of the day today trying XEmacs and ESS on a variety 
of Windows systems -- with and without my configuration files. I noticed a 
number of intermittent problems with GUI-related commands, such as attempts 
to open dialog boxes causing the R process to freeze. I'll try to track 
down the source of these problems.

Thanks for your patience.
  John
-----------------------------------------------------
John Fox
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M4
email: jfox at mcmaster.ca
phone: 905-525-9140x23604
web: www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox
-----------------------------------------------------

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A.J. Rossini
# 
john> (2) I spent a good part of the day today trying XEmacs and ESS on a
    john> variety of Windows systems -- with and without my configuration
    john> files. I noticed a number of intermittent problems with GUI-related
    john> commands, such as attempts to open dialog boxes causing the R process
    john> to freeze. I'll try to track down the source of these problems.

I'm not sure what the status of these is -- I do know that some people
I trust have wondered how the heck R even works under (X)Emacs on
Windows (issues arising with systems interfacing, blocking calls, and
similar "stuff").  

Note that I'm about 50% of the way to integrating John's work (along
with Tomy's (Thomas Gerd's) work for SAS) to provide toolbars.  I
expect it to be finished for the next release of ESS, so if you send
feedback privately to John, cc me if it is about problems (or you
might mention to him that you've not told me; I'll be in touch with
him).

This will simplify matters when I check in the new ESS stuff into the
XEmacs package archives, since it will mean that you can install via
the menu package items (similar to the R package installer menu
item).  

One question that has popped up is if the toolbar should be placed
somewhere else -- i.e. on the left or right sides -- I can make that
an option, defaulting to replacement of the top toolbar, or I could do
it VM style on the left side.  Thoughts?  

(probably the best reply to this would be to me, or we should move the
conversation over to the ess-help list).

best,
-tony
John Fox
# 
Dear Tony,

Please note that the problems that I've noted (beyond those produced by my 
inadequate instructions about where to put files) relate not to the 
toolbar, which seems to work fine, but to some of the menu items, which 
call up dialog boxes. I'm able to reproduce these problems without using my 
configuration file, by the way. As well, there are some problems that 
relate to graphics windows that also appear to be independent of my 
configuration.

Installation certainly will become simpler when my stuff gets folded into ESS.

(I decided to send my message to r-help because some people encountered 
difficulties that I hoped to clear up, and because I figured that someone 
there would have insight into the Windows problems.)

Regards,
  John
At 08:11 PM 11/26/2002 -0800, A.J. Rossini wrote:
-----------------------------------------------------
John Fox
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M4
email: jfox at mcmaster.ca
phone: 905-525-9140x23604
web: www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox
-----------------------------------------------------

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r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
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Marc Schwartz
# 
As an FYI to folks, I thought that I would just mention that Mozilla
V1.2 went to release yesterday. It may be prudent for folks using
Mozilla as their default browser to upgrade to this new version for
any of a number of reasons. The downloads of 1.2 are available here:

http://www.mozilla.org/releases/

The release notes for Mozilla 1.2 still suggest potential issues
relative to Java and these are located here:

http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.2/#install

and here:

http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.2/#java

Given the issues noted here of late, it would be my recommendation to
install Mozilla and then install/upgrade the appropriate version of
Java for your platform.  The notes above suggest possible fixes under
Windows/Linux/Unix if Java is not working for you, which have been
discussed here. Java V1.4.1 downloads are available for most platforms
here:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/download.html

The install instructions on the Mozilla site for 1.2 on Mac platforms
suggest that Mozilla will use the version of Java already installed as
was mentioned here this week, but that for OS versions 8.5 to 8.6 you
may need to upgrade the Java runtime package. Links are provided in
the Mac install section of the release notes.

For those using Xft enabled Linux versions (like me), 1.2 supports
Xft, but it is not enabled in the binaries by default. Thus you would
have to compile your own from source using the "--enable-xft" option
or for RH 8.0 use the nightly V1.3a RPMS here:

http://komodo.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/experimental/gtk2/

The current roadmap for Mozilla 1.3 suggests a February 2003 release
target. Perhaps they'll get the Java plug-in issue resolved by
then....  :-)



I thought that I would pass this information on since Mozilla use has
been a notable issue when using the search facilities in R.

Best regards,

Marc Schwartz





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