[R] rgl_081.708: rgl.snapshot fails, causing persistent problems

[John Fox]

Dear Michael,

I haven't tried rgl.snapshot() in the development version of rgl, so I can't
comment on that, but I believe that these are two unrelated problems. I
think that the version of rgl on CRAN fails to display text when rgl.* and
*3d function calls are mixed, while this works in the development version.

I hope this helps,
 John


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On
> Behalf Of Michael Friendly
> Sent: October-08-08 10:54 AM
> To: R-Help
> Subject: [R] rgl_081.708: rgl.snapshot fails, causing persistent problems
> 
> *Summary*:  The latest Windows binary version of rgl_081.708 from
> R-Forge has some problem that
> causes rgl.snapshot() to fail, at least on my system.
> Thereafter, *all* rgl 3D graphics are rendered without any text labels.
> The last problem remains even after (a) removing rgl and re-installing
> from CRAN, (b) re-starting
> with a fresh installation of all of R 2.7.2.
> *System*:  Win XP Pro
> 
> A vexing and persistent problem arose after I installed rgl_081.708 from
> R-Forge via
> install.packages("rgl",repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org")
> 
> Everything worked fine until the *first* time I tried to take a
> rgl.snapshot() of the current
> scene.
>  > rgl.snapshot("test.png")
> [1] "failed"
> 
> OK, I did :
> remove.packages("rgl")
> install.packages("rgl")
> to get rgl_081 from CRAN
> 
> However, after that, snapshot works, but all rgl.text -- axis labels,
> tick labels, plot
> annotations, etc. do not appear.
> E.g.: see
> http://euclid.psych.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/Test/iris3d-bad.jpg
> produced by:
> 
> library(rgl)
> data(iris)
> col <-c("blue", "green", "red")[iris$Species]
> plot3d(iris[,1:3], type="s", size=0.4, col=col, cex=2, box=FALSE,
> aspect="iso")
> (There should be variable labels and tick labels for the axes.)
> 
> I've now tried everything I can think of, *both* with R 2.7.2 and R 2.7.1
> - quitting and restarting R
> - uninstalling R, and re-installing a fresh copy, with all my old
> libraries (rgl_081)
> - reboot and power-down/restart
> 
> The problem persists, and I don't know what to look for to try to track
> this down
> and fix it. Some questions:
> What might cause this to persist, even after reinstalling R?
> Could there be any interaction between rgl.dll and anything else on my
> system?
> Is anyone brave enough to see if this problem [with rgl_081.708] is
> reproducible?
> If not reproducible, then it is something on my system.  If it is, could
> there be
> a problem with the build process on R-Forge for building rgl with png
> support?
> I've contacted the package maintainer, but he has no suggestions.
> 
> R> sessionInfo()
> R version 2.7.2 (2008-08-25)
> i386-pc-mingw32
> 
> locale:
> LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United
> States.1252;LC_MONETARY=English_United
> States.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> 
> other attached packages:
> [1] foreign_0.8-29 rgl_0.81       heplots_0.8-0  car_1.2-8
> 
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] tools_2.7.2
> R>
> 
> 
> --
> Michael Friendly     Email: friendly AT yorku DOT ca
> Professor, Psychology Dept.
> York University      Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814
> 4700 Keele Street    http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/friendly.html
> Toronto, ONT  M3J 1P3 CANADA
> 
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