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R commander fonts on R 3.4.0

3 messages · John Fox, Simon Urbanek, Jose G Conde Santiago

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Dear David,


Jose and I corresponded earlier today, and I can?t duplicate his problem
on two MacBook Pros, both with apparently the same setup as Jose?s: macOS
Sierra, R 3.4.0, Rcmdr 2.3-2, and XQuartz 2.7.11 (i.e., all current
versions). 

If the problem were with availability of X11 fonts, why would the fonts
appear properly for him with R 3.3.3 but not R 3.4.0?

I thought that someone more familiar with Macs than I am might spot the
cause of the problem from Jose?s screenshot, and so I suggested that he
write to the R-SIG-Mac list.

Best,
 John

-------------------------------------
John Fox, Professor
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Web: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/



On 2017-05-09, 6:45 PM, "R-SIG-Mac on behalf of David Winsemius"
<r-sig-mac-bounces at r-project.org on behalf of dwinsemius at comcast.net>
wrote:
2 days later
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In R versions before 3.4.0 we were shipping our own version of fontconfig which was using the following font directories

--with-default-fonts=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts --with-add-fonts="/System/Library/Fonts,/Library/Fonts,~/Library/Fonts"

As of R 3.4.0 we are using fontconfig from XQuartz (since they started diverging from our version and thus causing issues) so it's now entirely up to the standard font configuration in XQuartz. So my guess would be that you may have some fonts in your private font library which is not configured - possibly in ~/Library/Fonts. As far as I can tell XQuartz uses all of the above except for ~/Library/Fonts so you may need to either install the fonts your want at system level or change your fontconfig configuration to include your private font library. See fc-list to list all your fonts that fontconfig knows about.

Cheers,
Simon
2 days later
#
Sorry for the late reply. I was away from the office since Wednesday.

I tested in another machine (a Mac Book Pro) with the same operating system, and had the same results: the fonts for the R Commander interface are not smooth. 

I went to System Preferences -> General and found that in both machines the LCD smoothing box is checked.

However, there is a difference. When I go to Rcmdr and select Tools -> Font, my iMac shows Bitstream Vera Sans on the Dialog Font window, and ?fixed? on the ?Scriipt and output font?. On the MacBook I find ?helvetica? and ?courier? respectively.

When I change the fonts on my iMac to ?helvetica? and ?courier?, the fonts appear on the screen as expected.

It seems the fonts are available. My problem is that (now in two Macs) the native font smoothing feature of OS X does not operate in R Commander.

Jos?

Jos? G. Conde, MD, MPH
Catedr?tico, Escuela de Medicina
Director, CentIT2
Recinto de Ciencias M?dicas, UPR

Tel  (787) 763-9401  Fax (787) 758-5206

Correo electr?nico: jose.conde1 at upr.edu

URL: http://rcmi.rcm.upr.edu