R devel - Aug 2004 - Problem with R --gui=GNOME when launched from a menu system

A Debian user filed a bug report the details of which are at
	http://bugs.debian.org/269107

I can replicate his problem: the R/Gnome entry that is made available to the
various window managers fails. A window pops, and exists.

As far as I can tell, the menuing system does not have a problem with shell
script wrapper. Environment variables like PATH, DISPLAY etc should be set
too.  So the best idea I am having now is that R _may_ think that
interactive() is FALSE when it should in fact be TRUE.

Does anybody have a) other ideas, and fixes, or b) an idea how I could
correct the menuing system?

Dirk

-- 
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
                                                -- Groucho Marx

On Mon, 2004-08-30 at 21:38, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: 
> A Debian user filed a bug report the details of which are at
> 	http://bugs.debian.org/269107
> 
> I can replicate his problem: the R/Gnome entry that is made available to
the
> various window managers fails. A window pops, and exists.
> 
> As far as I can tell, the menuing system does not have a problem with shell
> script wrapper. Environment variables like PATH, DISPLAY etc should be set
> too.  So the best idea I am having now is that R _may_ think that
> interactive() is FALSE when it should in fact be TRUE.
> 
> Does anybody have a) other ideas, and fixes, or b) an idea how I could
> correct the menuing system?
> 
> Dirk

Dirk,

FWIW, I can replicate this behavior using a CVS build of XFCE4 (V4.1.3),
which uses xfwm4 as the window manager and not metacity. This is on an
FC2 system which otherwise has GNOME 2.6.

I recompiled R 1.9.1 patched to use the GNOME GUI. If I run it from a
bash shell, it is fine. If I try to run it from the XFCE4 run dialog or
add it to the desktop menu, it pops up briefly and then closes.

If I specify that the R session should run in a terminal, it opens a
regular R terminal console, but no GNOME GUI.

I created a shell script file (test.sh) with the command. I use ROX for
my FM, which has the "run action" for scripts set to "sh
ScriptFile". If
I click on the file, the R window pops up briefly and then clears. I can
however, run the script from a console using either "sh test.sh" or
"./test.sh" without problem.

So this behavior is not limited to GNOME/metacity and seems to be
environmental as you suggest.

Not sure if that helps, other than adding some confirmatory data points.

Best regards,

Marc

What are stdin/stdout/stderr connected to when you do that? R --gui=GNOME
does write certain error messages (from GDK/GTK) to the controlling
terminal so you may need one, at least if there is an error/warning.

I see gnome_start in src/modules/gnome/system.c has

    R_Interactive = isatty(0);

I would think that was blind copying.  Please see if setting it to 1 
helps.


On Mon, 30 Aug 2004, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> 
> A Debian user filed a bug report the details of which are at
> 	http://bugs.debian.org/269107
> 
> I can replicate his problem: the R/Gnome entry that is made available to
the
> various window managers fails. A window pops, and exists.
> 
> As far as I can tell, the menuing system does not have a problem with shell
> script wrapper. Environment variables like PATH, DISPLAY etc should be set
> too.  So the best idea I am having now is that R _may_ think that
> interactive() is FALSE when it should in fact be TRUE.
> 
> Does anybody have a) other ideas, and fixes, or b) an idea how I could
> correct the menuing system?
> 
> Dirk
> 
> 
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@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