[R] latex{Hmisc} cannot find xdvi on MAC OS X

[Don MacQueen]

Nobody seems to have asked whether the student is using R from the 
Mac GUI, or R at the unix-style command line prompt.

I have R 2.6.1 installed on a Mac running OS 10.4.11.  When I start R 
at the command prompt in a terminal emulator in the X windows 
environment, the example expression, latex(describe(dataframe)), 
succeeds. xdvi starts up and displays the preview.

When I use the Mac GUI, xdvi does not start up. Both ways of starting 
R are using the same installation of R.

When started by double-clicking on the icon that represents R, the 
unix path is not inherited. It's probably more accurate to say that 
PATH does  not exist, because no unix shell has been started. There 
are other mechanisms for creating environment variables that R can 
obtain via Sys.getenv(). (Create a file named environment.plist, or 
something like that, but I don't remember the exact details.)

Even if the R gui environment is set up so that the path to xdvi is 
available, it won't necessarily work, because xdvi requires that an X 
windows server and window manager be running. That's not normally the 
case for most Mac users (one assumes). On Mac OS 10.5.x those should 
start automatically when xdvi is started, but not on earlier versions 
of Mac OS.

(As an aside, this is probably the answer to Frank's comment, "shame 
on Mac" (for not inheriting path) -- if one wants the Mac to act like 
a linux box, then one must do one's work from within a unix shell. 
That's done either from the Terminal application, or other terminal 
emulator.)

The experts on this issue are best reached through R-sig-mac. A 
search of the archives will probably reveal how to define unix stye 
environment variables such as PATH, that the Mac R gui can use. The 
Mac-related pages at CRAN may also have this information.

-Don

At 9:22 AM -0500 1/23/08, Kevin E. Thorpe wrote:
>Hello.
>
>I am posting this on behalf of a student in my class.  I have been
>introducing them to R.
>
>I suspect that the problem I need help with is not so much an R
>issue, but a MAC config issue, but I don't have enough MAC
>experience to know what to do.
>
>Anyway, on to the problem.  We are using Frank Harrell's Hmisc
>and Design packages.  This student also wishes to use the latex
>formatting facilities provided in those packages so she has installed
>LaTeX.
>
>When she does something like latex(describe(dataframe)), the latex
>file is produced, the dvi file is successfully written but then
>the error "sh: line 1: xdvi: command not found" appears.
>
>I started a terminal and a "which xdvi" returned the path
>where it found xdvi.  So, it appears that xdvi is in the
>PATH.
>
>My apologies, I forgot to get her sessionInfo() but I think
>she is running R 2.6.?
>
>--
>Kevin E. Thorpe
>Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program
>Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences
>Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
>email: kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca  Tel: 416.864.5776  Fax: 416.864.6057
>
>______________________________________________
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>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.


-- 
--------------------------------------
Don MacQueen
Environmental Protection Department
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA, USA
925-423-1062