R SIG Debian - Jan 2009 - fluxbox, ess and redrawing r windows

Hi,

I'm running Lenny with Fluxbox, interacting with R via Emacs + ESS. An
ongoing aggravation with this setup is trying to get R graphics windows
redrawn. 

For example, I may have 8 or 10 R graphics windows open, and I switch
between them using Alt-tab. The problem is, sometimes the windows remain
blank. Sometimes I can get the display back by moving the window with
the mouse, or switching focus away from the window, then returning to
it. Other times, they just stubbornly refuse to show me their contents.
The problem is compounded when I want to compare three or four plots at
the same time - getting all four windows to show their contents at the
same time is incredibly frustrating.

Has anyone else experienced this? Anybody have any ideas how to fix
this?

Thanks,

Tyler
--

Hi,

what about setting

R> par(mfcol=c(2,2))

This will give one device with a 2 by 2 layout. See ?par, which also
points you to layout(), which I personally don't use yet.

And by the way, you could also use vim with R ;-)

Just my 2c,

Hannes


* tyler <tyler.smith at mail.mcgill.ca> [090129
18:50]:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm running Lenny with Fluxbox, interacting with R via Emacs + ESS. An
> ongoing aggravation with this setup is trying to get R graphics windows
> redrawn. 
> 
> For example, I may have 8 or 10 R graphics windows open, and I switch
> between them using Alt-tab. The problem is, sometimes the windows remain
> blank. Sometimes I can get the display back by moving the window with
> the mouse, or switching focus away from the window, then returning to
> it. Other times, they just stubbornly refuse to show me their contents.
> The problem is compounded when I want to compare three or four plots at
> the same time - getting all four windows to show their contents at the
> same time is incredibly frustrating.
> 
> Has anyone else experienced this? Anybody have any ideas how to fix
> this?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tyler
> --
> 
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-Debian mailing list
> R-SIG-Debian at r-project.org
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-debian
-- 
Dr. Johannes Ranke                 jranke at uni-bremen.de

On 29 January 2009 at 13:49, tyler wrote:
| I'm running Lenny with Fluxbox, interacting with R via Emacs + ESS. An
| ongoing aggravation with this setup is trying to get R graphics windows
| redrawn. 
| 
| For example, I may have 8 or 10 R graphics windows open, and I switch
| between them using Alt-tab. The problem is, sometimes the windows remain
| blank. Sometimes I can get the display back by moving the window with
| the mouse, or switching focus away from the window, then returning to
| it. Other times, they just stubbornly refuse to show me their contents.
| The problem is compounded when I want to compare three or four plots at
| the same time - getting all four windows to show their contents at the
| same time is incredibly frustrating.
| 
| Has anyone else experienced this? Anybody have any ideas how to fix
| this?

I think with the 'static' graphics model of R you are stuck with this
behaviour. I sometimes just force 'dev.set()' and another
'plot()'.

Switching to the JavaGD package / graphics device may help.  Speaking of
which, we now have rJava in Debian unstable [ and it installs fine on testing
] as package 'r-cran-rjava', so using these dynamic extension may now be
easier.

Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.