[RkWard-devel] R plot problems.

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi,

On Wednesday 24 January 2007 09:10, Prasenjit Kapat wrote:
> 1. There is a certain issue with the display of plots. Sometimes after a
> plot command (either from RConsole or Run + Selection from script editor)
> the "R Graphics: Device 2 (ACTIVE) - RKWard" titled window appears, but the
> display is all empty (gray - the default window color). Often, by doing
> Device + Duplicate, I get a new device window with the plot displayed
> properly. Sometimes even this does not help (even after multiple
> duplications).

Yes, this is a known issue (see 
https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=31344815&forum_id=12970). 
It's caused by a bug in kwin that should be fixed in KDE 3.5.6, i.e. real 
soon, now (it does seem however, KDE 3.5.6 is being temporarily held up by 
the fix for another bug in kdelibs, which I came across while programming the 
R Graphics device wrapper. The fix is now breaking workarounds for broken 
behavior in several other KDE apps...)

> The way out is to dev.off() a few times in the RConsole and try plotting
> again. But I haven't been able to deterministically recreate the problem. I
> will let you guys know if I can find a way to do that.

It is a race condition, so probably very hard to reproduce deterministically: 
While reparenting the window, the window manager has to "withdraw" the 
window, and temporarily reparent it to the root window. Both needs to have 
finished before embedding can be successful. Right now - if out of luck - 
this process takes longer than we wait for it. The solution in KDE 3.5.6 will 
be to "grab" the X Server during the process, which will make sure both steps 
are taken "at once".
Unfortunately, from the RKWard side, there's little we can do to further work 
around the issue.

> 2. Many times, closing the "R Graphics: Device" window (by clicking the x
> on top right corner) does not actually close the device. Consequently the
> next plot doesn't even come up. I have to manually dev.off() in the
> RConsole to get things right.

Does this happen only when the embedding failed in 1? In that case, 
unfortunately it is to be expected, but should also disappear with KDE 3.5.6. 
If it also happens when embedding has worked, that would be a different 
issue. However, I could not reproduce it for that case, so far.

Regards
Thomas
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