Basically John is asking for code like this to be included in tcltk.
Best,
Kasper
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 11:53 PM, Marc Schwartz <marc_schwa...@me.com>
wrote:
> On Jul 14, 2014, at 4:13 PM, John Fox <j...@mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>
> > Dear Simon and list members,
> >
> > As many of you are aware, when X11 isn't installed on Mac OS X, loading
> the
> > tcltk package produces an error, with a message that many users find
> > cryptic. There was yet another instance of this problem reported to the
> list
> > today.
> >
> > I'm interested in the issue because the Rcmdr package uses tcltk and thus
> > fails to load when X11 is absent. Rcmdr users tend to be inexperienced
> and
> > so, unless they find their way to the Rcmdr installation webpage, where
> > detailed installation instructions are provided, they tend to be stymied
> by
> > the problem.
> >
> > If I could, I'd intercept the problem by checking capabilities()["X11"]
> in
> > the Rcmdr .onLoad() or .onAttach() function, but because the Rcmdr
> package
> > imports the tcltk namespace, the error occurs before these startup
> functions
> > are executed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
> >
> > It occurs to me that tcltk could fail more gracefully on Mac OS X when
> X11
> > is absent, perhaps popping up a webpage in a browser with instructions
> and a
> > link for installing XQuartz. I'd do this myself in the Rcmdr package if I
> > could. Or tcltk could check for the presence of X11 and not try to start
> it
> > if it's absent, reporting a warning rather than throwing an error.
> >
> > Alternatively, I'd be grateful if someone could suggest how I might
> detect
> > the problem in the Rcmdr package before loading fails. The only thing
> that I
> > could think of was writing a separate RcmdrInstall package that bypasses
> > tcltk, but that would be awkward and would only help users who discovered
> > that RcmdrInstall exists.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > John
>
>
> John,
>
> Is there someplace in your startup process where you could run code along
> the lines of:
>
> if (grepl("apple", R.version$platform) & length(list.files("/opt/X11/bin",
> pattern = "Xquartz")) == 0) {
> cat("X11 is required. Please visit http://xquartz.macosforge.org to
> download and install Xquartz.")
> stop()
> }
>
>
> The above code will check to see if the user is running R on OS X and also
> if the Xquartz binary is present in the default location.
>
> Not sure if this is helpful.
>
> Regards,
>
> Marc Schwartz
>
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