R help - Aug 2009 - RConsole processing crashes Rgui.exe

Using R 2.9.2 on Windows XP SP3.

1. Edit ~/Rconsole, and set

font = TT Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

2. Start Rgui.exe
3. Go to Edit, GUI Preferfences
4. Rgui.exe crashes

Rgui.exe does not crash if I do not access GUI Preferences (i.e., if I just use
R), and it does correctly use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono as my font. Nor does it
crash if I edit RConsole to set the font back to Lucida Console and then try to
access GUI Preferences.

On 30/08/2009 11:40 AM, Jack Tanner wrote:
> Using R 2.9.2 on Windows XP SP3.
> 
> 1. Edit ~/Rconsole, and set
> 
> font = TT Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
> 
> 2. Start Rgui.exe
> 3. Go to Edit, GUI Preferfences
> 4. Rgui.exe crashes
> 
> Rgui.exe does not crash if I do not access GUI Preferences (i.e., if I just
use
> R), and it does correctly use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono as my font. Nor does
it
> crash if I edit RConsole to set the font back to Lucida Console and then
try to
> access GUI Preferences.
> 
Thanks for the report.  I can reproduce that; I'll see if I can figure 
out what's going wrong.

Duncan Murdoch

On 30/08/2009 11:40 AM, Jack Tanner wrote:
> Using R 2.9.2 on Windows XP SP3.
> 
> 1. Edit ~/Rconsole, and set
> 
> font = TT Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
> 
> 2. Start Rgui.exe
> 3. Go to Edit, GUI Preferfences
> 4. Rgui.exe crashes
> 
> Rgui.exe does not crash if I do not access GUI Preferences (i.e., if I just
use
> R), and it does correctly use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono as my font. Nor does
it
> crash if I edit RConsole to set the font back to Lucida Console and then
try to
> access GUI Preferences.
> 
I've found the bug, and a partial fix will appear in R-devel and 
R-patched shortly.  The problem is that the dialog assumed you're using 
one of the fonts in its list, and the Bitstream font isn't there.  If 
you'd like to edit the code to allow a more general font selection (any 
fixed width font on your system would make sense) I'd consider a patch, 
but I don't have time to do that.  All I've done is allow you to type in
any valid font name, or put it into Rconsole, which is more or less 
equivalent.

A problem with my partial fix is that the sample text doesn't get 
updated after you change fonts:  because of limitations in the ancient 
GUI toolkit we use, there are no notifications sent when you select a 
font other than by choosing from the predefined list.  The whole thing 
needs rewriting (and has for years), but that's certainly not something 
I'm planning to take on.

Duncan Murdoch