[R] png-generation from script (non-X11 env) now broken?

[David Wolfskill]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 11:10:12AM -0800, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> This is really not new... Google is your friend... http://bit.ly/1fCUnQH... or read FAQ 7.19. The fact that this "changed" for you seems more like something changed on your end... did your admin remove X11 from your system?
> ...

I am my sysadmin.  (I actually was one for about 3 decades prior to my
current position.  I am not now, nor have I ever been, a statistician.)

I had never had an issue (since May 2012) creating a PNG file from a
script running out of crontab -- thus my surprise when it failed.

As an experiment, I tried running the script in an xterm that had
DISPLAY defined properly; the PNG files were created (without
displaying them on the X11 display device), but I did get some odd
messages, and a couple of the plots came out effectively blank
(which I don't find especially useful):

Warning message:
In grid.Call.graphics(L_polygon, x$x, x$y, index) :
  semi-transparency is not supported on this device: reported only once per page

Warning message:
In plot.xy(xy, type, ...) :
  semi-transparency is not supported on this device: reported only once per page

(These were from plots where I specified an "alpha" value.  The
first was from a invocation of the form:

p <- qplot(..., geom = c("blank"), ...) + geom_violin(..., fill=I("steelblue")) + geom_boxplot(..., fill="gold", alpha=0.75)

and the second, of the form:

plot(xvals, yvals, pch = ".", col = col_list, ...)

  where "col_list" is a list of colors, each of which includes a
  specification of "alpha = 0.2".)

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				r at catwhisker.org
Taliban: Evil cowards with guns afraid of truth from a 14-year old girl.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 964 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/attachments/20140225/0fe940d4/attachment-0002.bin>