Graphics ...

96 views
Skip to first unread message

Peter Mott

unread,
Feb 9, 2012, 2:19:07 PM2/9/12
to pyRserve
Hi,

I am looking to build an extension to ActiveState Komodo that allows
to run an R-interpreter in a "pane" . To do this I'm hoping to use
pyRserve to connect to Rserve. Unfortunately I'm using Windows 7
which makes everything more difficult.
I find that if I issue conn.r("plot(1:100, rnorm(100), type'l')") to
pyRserve then Rserve opens the usual window with the plot in it. All
well and good. But if I click on the window it switches from 'Active'
to 'Inactive' and freezes. However I can close the window by issuing
conn.r("dev.off()").

This seems to be something to do with the processes started by Rserve.
Have you any advice on how I might go about fixing this?

Thank you for any help, and pyRserve is great,

Peter

Ralph Heinkel

unread,
Feb 10, 2012, 4:18:11 AM2/10/12
to pyRserve
Hi Peter,

from what I understand this sounds like a Rserve problem rather than
pyRserve. Basically pyRserve is sort of a remote control for Rserve
and completely relies on how Rserve handles requests. This is
especially true for all kind of windows that are opened by Rserve.
A better place to look for help would probably be the Rserve home page
at http://www.rforge.net/Rserve/index.html
Also Simon Urbanek, the author of Rserve, is usually pretty helpful
when problems arise.

Sorry that I can't help more (especially since I've never used
(py)Rserve on Windows ...)

Ciao ciao

Ralph

Peter Mott

unread,
Feb 10, 2012, 4:42:42 AM2/10/12
to pyRserve
Thanks Ralph. I emailed Simon. He said that the behaviour is as
expected and pointed out that
opening windows on the device that the server is running on is not
very pointful when Rserve
is being used to support remote connections! Fair enough but the thing
is that RStudio
behaves better. But it's an Rserve issue.

Thanks, Peter

On Feb 10, 9:18 am, Ralph Heinkel <ralph.hein...@web.de> wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> from what I understand this sounds like a Rserve problem rather than
> pyRserve. Basically pyRserve is sort of a remote control for Rserve
> and completely relies on how Rserve handles requests. This is
> especially true for all kind of windows that are opened by Rserve.
> A better place to look for help would probably be the Rserve home page
> athttp://www.rforge.net/Rserve/index.html

Ralph Heinkel

unread,
Feb 10, 2012, 5:32:41 AM2/10/12
to pyrs...@googlegroups.com
I think Simon is right, opening a window on a remote system where you
can't see it doesn't make sense in most cases. What we do for our
Rserve running on unix systems is to start up a virtual X Window
server (Xvfb) into which we route windows opened by Rserve. Xvfb is
not connected to any physical graphics card or monitor, in just runs
internally within the computers RAM. This way opened windows don't get
into anybody's way.
Maybe there is an equivalent thing available for Windows systems.

Ralph

Peter Mott

unread,
Feb 10, 2012, 6:33:46 AM2/10/12
to pyrs...@googlegroups.com
So on your Rserve machine you set up a "virtual" display that does not
display anything. That is the sort of thing you can't do on Windows
(well maybe you can if you know enough about Windows but that knowledge
is not widely available and certainly I don't have it). The Unix way of
lots of loosely coupled bits that can be re-arranged as needed is not
the Windows way I'm afraid.

I'll keep at it ....

Best wishes, Peter

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages