[R] x11() and Xinerama settings

[Thomas Zumbrunn]

On Friday 07 December 2007, Thomas Zumbrunn wrote:
> Since I changed my X11 settings to a Xinerama setup, calls to x11() result
> in windows with a width half the size of the one specified by the
> corresponding parameter. Furthermore, x axis labels are overlapping. Other
> devices (e.g. pdf()), are not affected by these distortions.
>
> Did anybody have the same problem, and if so, how did you solve it? ( I'm
> using openSUSE 10.3 on a x86 architecture.)

I reply to my own question in order to provide a short summary of what I found 
out since it might be helpful for some GNU/Linux users of R.

Because I got no answer on the this list, I - which was wrong - filed a bug 
against R. Prof. Ripley pointed out that my X11 settings must be wrong and 
that most probably the DisplaySize setting in xorg.conf is wrong. This was 
actually the case. In my Xinerama setup, the DisplaySize width value was the 
sum of both devices. The xorg.conf was generated by the openSUSE tool SaX2, 
and I therefore filed a bug against it: 
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=357597 The bug is now fixed, and 
the DisplaySize width value is now only representing the widht of the 
corresponding device.

For those who are also affected by this problem: To fix distorted R x11() 
windows, simply fix the DisplaySize values in your xorg.conf file and restart 
your X server.

Thanks go to Prof. Ripley for pointing me in the right direction and also to 
Marc Schwartz and Hin-Tak Leung for further useful advice.