rgl window problem

I'm still a bit lost...  It is true that I'm still using X11 to run R
but I would
be happy to use the GUI -- in fact I have used it a bit from my laptop
for teaching purposes, but on my desktop I'm in need of building
packages from source and haven't managed to see my way clear
to using the binary versions that Simon is providing.  So ....

I tried just downloading the GUI from  Simon's ATT page.  When
this starts up, I get:


Error in checkConflicts(value) : unimplemented type 'character' in
'asLogical'
Error in seq_along(specs) : argument is not interpretable as logical
Error in gzfile(file) : invalid 'encoding' argument
[Workspace restored from /Users/roger/.RData]

and library(rgl)  doesn't produce any messages, but neither does it
do anything
in response to example(suface3d) except return a prompt.  This also
happens
with other packages:  no complaints on loading, but no response from
attempts
to use the package, and search indicates that the packages aren't in
the search
list.  When R starts up it says it is running:

	R version 2.4.0 Under development (unstable) (2006-08-16 r38905)

but this isn't the version that I'm running from my X11 windows...as
noted below.

url:    www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger            Roger Koenker
email    rkoenker at uiuc.edu            Department of Economics
vox:     217-333-4558                University of Illinois
fax:       217-244-6678                Champaign, IL 61820


On Dec 6, 2006, at 9:14 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

On 12/6/2006 9:51 AM, stefano iacus wrote:

we usually use .Platform$GUI to check if we are under R.app or
under  the console
Un R.app .Platform$GUI="AQUA", under terminal it is set to
"X11" (if  R is built with X11 support, which is the case of CRAN
binary)
stefano
p.s. and this is Cocoa not Carbon. The OS X GUI itself is called
AQUA  though. Both Cocoa and Carbon are layers between the system
and the  AQUA GUI. So, definitely AQUA but not Carbon.

Thanks.  I'll see if I can put in a test based on .Platform$GUI.

Duncan Murdoch

On 06/dic/06, at 23:08, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

On 12/6/2006 8:43 AM, roger koenker wrote:

I've recently installed rgl on a:

R version 2.5.0 Under development (unstable) (2006-09-10 r39242)
powerpc-apple-darwin8.7.0

system, from source and everything seemed to be ok, the package
loads without complaints, however  trying to run any of the
examples
produces the usual window, but no plotting occurs.  The window
is blank, and moving the cursor over the window gives the dreaded
spinning pinwheel of cluelessness.

Can anyone suggest a strategy for further diagnosis?

This sounds as though you are running from the console rather than
R.app, but have built rgl (or downloaded a copy built) to use  
AGL in
Carbon rather than X11.  That doesn't work.  AGL calls only work
from R.app.

If someone knows a nice run-time test for whether Carbon will
work I'd
put it in to at least give a meaningful error message.  I'd really
prefer it to fall back to trying X11 in that case, but that looks
much
harder:  for an OSX newbie like me, I think the AGL/X11 decision
needs
to be done at link time, not run time.  (On Windows I'd load the
appropriate OpenGL .dll when the package loaded, and do all the
calls
indirectly.  But I don't know how to do this on OSX.)

If my assumption in the first paragraph is wrong, please let me
know.
And if "Carbon" is the wrong name for the graphics system that
supports
the standard Mac GUI and AGL, I wouldn't mind hearing that either.

Duncan Murdoch