Dear Emacs, please make this -*-Text-*- mode!
**************************************************
* Windows-specific changes to R *
* See the file NEWS for changes that *
* affect all versions of R. *
* *
* 2.5 SERIES NEWS *
**************************************************
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.5.0
GUI CHANGES
o In MDI mode there is a new View menu when the console is in
focus which allows the toolbar and statusbar to be
(de)selected, with the initial settings taken from the
Rconsole file as before. The default setting for the
statusbar has been changed to 'no', as it is barely used by
default.
o There is a new menu item in Rgui to 'Stop all computations'
which kills all R computations immediately, skips any on.exit
conditions and returns to the command prompt.
o The 'Install packages ...' menu item now only installs essential
dependencies ('Depends' and 'Imports' but not 'Suggests'),
using install.packages(dependencies = NA).
o The 'save as' file dialogs from the 'File' menu in a graphics
window now add an appropriate extension to the file name. To
specify a file name without an extension, put the name in
quotes, e.g. "foo". (As requested in PR#9336.)
o There is support in both Rgui and Rterm for object/file name
completion via the TAB key using package rcompgen. This can
be disabled by setting the environment variable
R_COMPLETION=FALSE when starting R (e.g. in ~/.Renviron).
(Words within quotes are interpreted as file names, others as
R object names. Use library(rcompgen); ?rc.options for more
details, including tuning the behaviour.)
FUNCTION CHANGES
o Sys.getenv() has been changed to use the C-level environment and
not the Windows environment block for the process, for
consistency with Sys.getenv("FOO"), Sys.setenv() and
Sys.unsetenv(). A few Windows-specific environment variables
(such as =C:) no longer appear.
o https:// URLs can be accessed by download.file() and url() if
--internet2 is used (and provided the certificate is accepted as
valid).
o bitmap() and dev2bitmap() will now accept paths in 'GS_CMD' and
'file' which contain spaces (by converting to short path names
inside the functions).
o system() gains an 'ignore.stderr' argument for consistency with
Unix. (This changes the order of arguments.) The defaults
have been changed to 'show.output.on.console=TRUE,
invisible=TRUE' which make system() in Rgui more consistent
with Rterm and with other ports of R.
o For consistency with Unix, system(intern=TRUE) and pipe(, "r")
connections no longer capture stderr, only stdout (except on
Rgui if ignore.stderr = FALSE, since Rgui has no separate
stderr).
INSTALLER
o The Inno Setup installer now installs the desktop icon (if
selected) for all users if run from an account with
administrative privileges.
OTHERS
o This file (CHANGES) has been reformatted to be readable by the
readNEWS() function.
o The C-level printf function used for printing has been altered
to implement a round-to-even rule. This means that output is
more likely to be identical to that on Unix-alikes.
o R CMD INSTALL now installs by default into the first library on
the library path if R was run in the current environment.
Similarly, R CMD REMOVE by default removes from that library.
R CMD INSTALL does a better job of removing its temporary
directory.
o R CMD BATCH now prints the result of proc.time() at the end of
the output, as it long has on Unix-alikes.
o More of the messages from the script editor are translatable.
o There is support for x86_64 cross-compilers as well as for ix86.
o mingw-runtime >= 3.11 is needed to build R. (E.g., it provides
isblank that was previously missing.)
o src/extra/trio has been updated to 1.12.
o malloc.c has been updated to version 2.8.3. This version has a
slightly different allocation strategy, and is likely to work
a little better close to address space limits but may give
more warnings about reaching the total allocation before
successfully allocating.
o file.access() would give an error if asking about execute
permission on Vista: the underlying C function has been
changed to be incompatible with POSIX and we now work around this.
o Packages are now compiled with -O3. (R itself has been since
2.3.0.)
o Packages can have a 'cleanup.win' script to cleanup after
configure.win etc.
o The toolset described in the R Installation and Administration
manual for building on Windows is now partially available in
an executable installer.
o The messages about being unable to update package and search
index files when installing packages without sufficient
permissions to update R are now suppressed (as Windows often
reports inaccurately about file permissions).
BUG FIXES
o md5check.exe works again (it was throwing spurious differences
after a compiler update).
o Some links in .chm help files were not working. (PR#9586)
o rcmd Rdiff was not working (used by R CMD check).
o Workaround a Windows' mktime bug that affected the POSIXct to
POSIXlt conversion during leap days in leap years prior to
1970 in timezones which were on DST at the time. (PR#9572)
o system() could have overflowed a buffer with a very long
command line that contained quotes.
**************************************************
* *
* 2.4 SERIES NEWS *
* *
**************************************************
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.4.1 patched
BUG FIXES
o Using the AltGr key in the script editor was treated as a control key.
This was fixed for the rest of Rgui in R 0.9.1, and unfixed by the
contributed code implementing the script editor. (PR#9430)
o Returning focus to a window (e.g. the script editor after
saving) no longer changes the size or position, e.g. leaving a
maximized window maximized.
o When reading from pipes (which includes pipe(open="r") and
system() with intern=TRUE or show.output.on.console=TRUE in
Rgui) it is now possible to interrupt the command and the Rgui
console will be responsive whilst it is running (and R will
take up far less of the CPU). (Probably also fixes PR#7634.)
o menu.ttest2() in example package 'windlgs' was broken.
o CHM help is now converted with support for the \encoding{} section.
o etc/Makeconf was being left out of builds of the installer.
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.4.1
UNCATEGORIZED
o Inno Setup >= 5.1.7 is now required to build the installer.
o Reverted 2.4.0 change that required case-sensitive specification of
commands to R CMD.
o The Simplified Chinese menu messages were in the wrong format,
causing Rgui to crash on startup. (PR#9277)
o Menu messages are now available in a Spanish translation.
o The pointsize of fonts in the windows() graphics device may now
be set to any positive integer.
o Building customized installers failed because the startup
options weren't being handled properly.
o If Rconsole settings were such that R could not start properly,
it crashed. It now suggests starting with the --vanilla
option, which now does not load Rconsole. Additionally, an
option --no-Rconsole has been added for completeness and
debugging.
o shell.exec() now gives an error and a reason when it fails
(rather than continuing silently as before).
o R CMD SHLIB again uses PKG_LIBS in files Makevars[.win] (it did
not in R 2.4.0).
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.4.0
UNCATEGORIZED
o The language for menus and messages can be set in the 'Rconsole'
file and (for future messages/sessions) from the GUI
preferences.
o The initial setting for console buffering can be set in the
'Rconsole' file and (for future sessions) from the GUI
preferences.
o The installer can set defaults for MDI/SDI display, help style,
and use of the --internet2 startup option. Custom builds of R
can change these defaults. The standard build now defaults to
CHM help.
o If CHM help is selected, but is not present (e.g. a package was
cross- compiled on Unix), the help system defaults to text
help.
o getGraphicsEvent() now writes its prompt to the standard output
stream, so it can be captured by sink() or capture.output().
o getGraphicsEvent() now leaves the standard graphics window menus
in place, so those functions are available while waiting for
an event.
o iconv.dll has been updated to 1.11, which has some improvements
for CJK languages under Windows (e.g. support for the Euro).
o Rcmd and R CMD check the name of Perl scripts, so errors like 'R
CMD install' are detected.
o The default limit for --max-mem-size has been changed: see the rw-FAQ.
o The .chm files are now given a title identifying the package.
o There are new utilities 'Rcmd Sweave' and 'Rcmd Stangle' for
processing of Sweave documentation.
INSTALLING PACKAGES
o It is now possible to use relative paths as 'lib' in
install.packages(), not just absolute ones.
o Installing packages (in particular saving an image and preparing
for lazy-loading and lazydata) is now done in a C locale for
consistency with Unix. (This will only possibly affect CJK
locales, where some checks on the validity of symbols and
strings might be locale-dependent.)
o There is a new file etc/Makeconf that provides an approximation
to the Unix version and may help with src/Makefile's.
C-LEVEL CHANGES
o There is now a similar embedding interface to that under Unix,
using Rf_initEmbeddedR / Rf_endEmbeddedR.
o The C-level *printf functions have been replaced by those from
the trio library, which ensures a higher level of C99
compliance without the need for lots of Windows-specific
workarounds.
o Entry points which are hidden in libR.so on Unix are now also
hidden in R.dll. (Just over half the entry points are hidden,
which speeds up loading.)
o It is possible to select (in MkRules) the type of debug symbol
used, and this now defaults to 'dwarf-2' (which is more
efficient than the previous default of 'stabs'). More parts
of R are now built with debug symbols when DEBUG=T.
o The symbols in graphapp are now remapped to start with GA_, so
any code making use of graphapp will need to be recompiled.
BUILDING R
o mingw-runtime >= 3.10 is required to build R (a bug fix in the
handling of MBCS code is required). This is enforced by a
check in building Rpwd.exe.
o At the time of writing mingw-runtime-3.10 was not listed on the
MinGW downloads page, but it is available from
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/mingw-runtime-3.10.tar.gz?download
BUG FIXES
o The menu items for source and load/save workspace/history and
drag-and-drop can now be used for paths on network shares
(starting with \\).
o Using lines of more than 1000 chars in an R file in batch mode
could crash R.
o If the input line limit (1024 bytes) was exceeded whilst pasting
in, a byte was lost and the last byte input from the keyboard
was repeated after the paste.
o The script editor would only load 1000 bytes if the locale in
use was not the system locale. (PR#9254)
**************************************************
* *
* 2.3 SERIES NEWS *
* *
**************************************************
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.3.1 patched
BUG FIXES
o winMenuAdd() could crash when too many menus were added. (PR#8961)
o The data editor could crash when too much was pasted into it.
o dirname() converted paths involving network shares to forward slashes.
(PR#8892)
o R could crash when very low on memory. (PR#8981)
o Due to a typo, R CMD Rd2dvi would not work with MiKTeX.
o Objects from Fortran 9X sources no longer need to be declared to
R CMD SHLIB/INSTALL via OBJS in Makevars.win.
o There is a new option to make a .msi Microsoft Installer,
intended for use by sysadmins doing automated installs. See
the 'R Installation and Administration Manual'. (Thanks to
David del Campo (Dept of Statistics, University of Oxford) for
suggesting WiX and building a prototype installer.)
o It was intended that saving the GUI preferences would default to
the home directory, but Windows only accepted paths with \
separators at that point, ignoring others with no error
message.
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.3.1
UNCATEGORIZED
o In the GUI preferences editor, the font size can be set to
values not in the drop down list. (The number of choices in
the list has been increased.) Font names not in the drop-down
font list can be chosen.
o The MinGW C function wcrtomb was only working for Latin-1
characters, and it had been replaced. This affected the
specification of 'pch' as a character, and some little-used
aspects of plotmath.
o The installer generated a link in the Program menu to a
no-longer existent help page.
o Opening a device via windows(resize="fixed") would sometimes
fail with a message about 'outer margins too large'. (PR#8857)
o Sys.setlocale() interprets LC_CTYPE=C as a request for CP1252,
as the startup code long has. (This is necessary to avoid
various crashes in the MinGW runtime code.)
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.3.0
UNCATEGORIZED
o There is an error handler for access violations and illegal
instructions, which issues a traceback and error message, then
returns to the top level. This is switched off after 10 uses
in a session. Note that such errors can be the result of
damage to the code or objects in memory, so it is advisable to
save your work and restart R unless you know exactly what
happened.
o There is a new function choose.dir() to choose a folder (as used
for 'Change dir...' on the File menu in Rgui.)
o New function shortPathName() to convert names to DOS-style paths
(8+3 names and no spaces).
o Added workaround to Windows graphics devices (windows(),
win.metafile(), etc.) to allow callers to choose not to
restore the focus to the console. The interface to this will
likely change in a future release.
o For compatibility with Unix, the following environment variables
are checked for a writable directory for the R session
temporary directory:
TMPDIR TMP TEMP R_USER
(the last will always succeed). The changes are that TMPDIR
is checked first and that the values are checked to be a
directory.
o sprintf() now tries to ensure the output is C99-compliant, with
e.g. 1.23e+08 not 1.23e+008 as given by MSVCRT.dll.
o Rterm now responds to Ctrl-C during input (Ctrl-Break always
worked). This means ^C is no longer echoed.
o The minimum value for --max-mem-size is now 32M (rather than 16M).
o file.info() now supports files bigger than 2Gb (the size was
reported incorrectly before, since Windows' stat call only
supports smaller files).
o The installer executable now has the file version information
set appropriately.
o The DLL version number is now 2.xy.svn_revision.
o There is now aggressive protection of the setting of the FPU
control word: it is reset to 64-bit mantissa and rounding mode
before evaluating every expression. This should prevent the
implicit loading of DLLs changing to 53-bit mantissa, but has
a small performance penalty.
o The file open dialogs now list *.ssc and *.S files in addition
to *.q files as "S files".
o readClipboard() and writeClipboard() now support formats other
than text. A new function getClipboardFormats() reports on
available formats.
o The Rgui console now supports '\r' in output as a
non-destructive return to the left margin in the same way as
Rterm (it was previously ignored). Note that copy/cut of
overtyped output will not necessarily pick up the visible
layer of text.
o The "Edit|GUI preferences..." dialog now allows Rconsole files
to be loaded as well as saved. A new function loadRconsole()
has also been added.
INTERNATIONALIZATION
o There is no longer a separate 'East Asian' version of R.dll.
(Also, msvcp60.dll is no longer used as libmingwex now
supplies suitable functions.)
o There is now MBCS support for the line editor in Rterm.exe.
(Contributed by Haruki Koyanagi.)
o On NT-based versions of Windows, Unicode characters are used to
draw on the console, pager, editor and windows() family of
devices in multi-byte locales. (This allows the user to
select a locale other than the one Windows is running in, and
with suitable fonts see the intended characters. Menus and
dialogs should also work in the selected locale. A Windows
quirk means that window titles (which includes the legends for
the buttons used in the Preferences dialog box) use a font in
the system locale.
o Added a few mappings from Windows locale names (e.g. "chinese",
"chs", "cht", "ptb", "spanish", "esp", "esm", "esn") to
language names. There is still scope for confusion: LC_ALL=es
is Estonian, and LANGUAGE=es is Spanish.
o Spanish (as used in Spain) has been added to the list of
installation languages.
INSTALLING PACKAGES
o R CMD INSTALL will now clean up after interruption (by Ctrl-C, at
least where supported by the shell).
o R CMD INSTALL --docs now has more options.
o Links to package 'methods' are now fixed up, and R CMD INSTALL
no longer reports as missing links to 'datasets' and
'grDevices' which would be fixed up.
o There is now support for compiling Fortran 90/95 code in
packages: see 'Writing R Extensions'.
o Packages can now supply export files pkgname/src/pkgname-win.def:
package 'stats' does so.
o The restriction on the number of dots in a package name (which
stemmed from an undocumented restriction in ld.exe) has been worked
around.
C-LEVEL CHANGES
o This version of R expects a complete double-complex BLAS to be
available, and so customized (e.g. ATLAS and ACML) versions of
Rblas.dll need to be rebuilt. (The pre-compiled ones available on
CRAN have been updated.)
o The ACML optimized BLAS can be used for LAPACK: see the 'R
Installation and Administration Manual'.
o Since the Goto BLAS is no longer available for Windows, support
for it has been withdrawn.
o The assembler exponentiation code has been updated to that from
glibc 2.3.6.
o The import libraries libR.a, libRblas.a, libRlapack.a and
libproxy.a are no longer used, as we now link directly to the
corresponding DLL (except that a local version of libRblas.a
is needed to build R.dll, since R.dll and Rblas.dll are
mutually dependent).
o Import libraries are now made by default without -k (--kill-at).
This might be relevant for contributed software using R's
macros.
o The default optimization level for code in R (but not packages)
has been changed from -O2 to -O3, since space taken by
compiled code is no longer much of an issue. This will result
is a small performance increase.
o When making DLLs, the objects are no longer wrapped in an
archive en route (this was needed to avoid line-length limits
on an earlier shell).
o When making standalone Rmath, the static library is now
libRmath.a and the import library is called libRmath.dll.a.
BUG FIXES
o iconv() was not always getting the current charset ("") right,
especially if the locale was set in a running R session.
o gzfile() now always ensures that the underlying file is opened
in binary mode (this is only an issue on Windows). This
solves some problems with reading compressed data files via
gzfile().
o winMenuAdd() now has no limits on the number of menus or items,
and names are now limited to 500 (not 50) bytes.
o Several fixes to Rproxy have been submitted by Thomas Baier, so
it handles more types of objects.
o Outputting \b in Rgui deleted the last byte and not the last
character.
**************************************************
* *
* 2.2 SERIES NEWS *
* *
**************************************************
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.2.1 patched
BUG FIXES
o Opening any window (pager/editor/windows() device) was resetting
the LC_CTYPE in the locale to the system default.
o formatC() sometimes gave spurious leading spaces on Windows (PR#8337).
o Workaround in unlink() for a Windows-run-time problem with
deleting directories with leading spaces in the name.
o tempdir() and tempfile() use all backslashes again (2.2.1 did not).
o When a graphics window was double-buffered, it would update too
frequently while waiting for input, overloading some remote
display utilities.
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.2.1
UNCATEGORIZED
o Using the latest binutils allows us to distribute Rgui.exe and
Rterm.exe as large-address-aware (see the rw-FAQ Q2.9).
o The maximum C stack size for Rgui.exe and Rterm.exe has been
increased to 10Mb (from 2Mb); this is comparable with the
default on Linux systems and may allow some larger programs to
run without crashes.
o Overwrite mode in the console now works for MBCS charsets.
(Patch contributed by Haruki Koyanagi.)
o Input from the Rgui console was changing the letter 255 (� in Latin-2)
in the character set to letter 1.
o R CMD REMOVE in 2.2.0 removed the package(s) but failed to remake the
indices.
o The windows() family of devices did not find the right character width
in MBCS locales for non-ASCII characters. (Pointed out by Ei-ji
Nakama.)
o The installer was missing doc/html/index.html.
o Windows was sometimes incorrectly labelling times on BST as on GMT,
e.g. "1972-07-01 01:00:00 GMT Standard Time".
o Closing the script editor could leave Rgui in an unstable
state. (PR#8288)
o Support has been added for the ACML optimized BLAS: see the 'R
Installation and Administration Manual'.
o winMenuAdd() had a limit of 16 additional menus but only
allocated 10: it now has the limit of 16 as intended.
o Clicking on the left part of the MDI radiobutton in the
preferences dialog failed.
o A different algorithm is used to find the R session temporary
directory, one that is more likely to succeed.
o For compatibility with Unix, tempfile() names have a random hex
suffix (and not a decimal one), and there are many more values
to choose from.
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.2.0
UNCATEGORIZED
o The installer will be called R-2.2.0-win32.exe and by default
install into (the local equivalent of) C:/Program
Files/R/R-2.2.0. The 'rw2010' notation has been dropped.
o file:// URLs are now interpreted by download.file(),
download.packages() and url() in the same way as Mozilla-based
browsers. That is, the expected form is
file:///d:/path/to/file
with *three* slashes.
o library.dynam() temporarily adds the <package>/libs dir to the
path so that dependent DLLs can be put there and found with no
further action.
o The (D)COM support has been updated, and header files and an
import library (src/gnuwin32/librproxy.a) are now installed.
See the rcom package for usage.
o There are now Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Traditional) and
Russian translations of the Rgui menus.
o win.graph(), x11() and X11() now behave in the same way as
windows() in respect of the xpinch, ypinch, graphics.record,
gamma and windowsBuffered options.
o savePlot() now allows extensions '.emf' and '.eps'.
o The script editor menu no longer has an option to exit R (as the
pager and graphics menus do not).
o Installation is now available in Finnish.
o install.packages() now detect members of a bundle which are in use
and so skips the bundle (as it does for packages).
o MiKTeX is now recognised and the command-line set suitably for it.
o If the user chooses to register R during installation, a
registry entry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\R-core\R\{version}\InstallPath
will be added. Users require administrative privileges to
create this key. For others, the same key will be put under
the HKEY_CURRENT_USER root.
o The sample R_HOME/etc/Rprofile file has been renamed to
Rprofile.site (the documented name for such a file for some
years).
o mingw-runtime-3.8 is now required to build R (as it contains
expm1).
**************************************************
* *
* 2.1 SERIES NEWS *
* *
**************************************************
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.1.1 patched
BUG FIXES
o The progress bar was being left behind when a download was
aborted. (PR#7964). In addition, it now retains its position
from one download to the next, rather than always moving back
to the center of the screen.
o Added workaround in Sys.timezone() for Windows' confusion over
the GMT timezone.
o Windows was sometimes leaving behind temporary files associated
with anonymous file() connections - we now try to clean up
after it.
o The default type of file for saving a script was not being set
by the contributed C code for the script editor, so it
reverted to the type of the last file dialog (PR#8018).
o formatC() with an exponential format sometimes did not line the
fields up correctly.
o The 'Open Script' button shown from the pager toolbar in MDI
mode was set up incorrectly and liable to crash R. (PR#8060)
o seek(origin = "end") was repositioning to the wrong
location. (PR#7896)
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.1.1
UNCATEGORIZED
o The installer allows a choice of languages. Note that
uninstallation will happen in the language chosen for
installation.
o A menu item has been added for RSiteSearch().
o localeToCharset() was failing on some unknown (to the maintainers)
locales such as
LC_CTYPE=Chinese_People's Republic of China.936
and that affected example().
o Translation of the filters in file load/save dialog spaces was
being handled incorrectly by gettext, and is now not
attempted.
o Attempting to plot repeatedly to the same metafile sometimes
crashed R. (PR#7821: it is unclear why Windows does not allow
this.)
o Using the mouse scroll wheel in the data editor sometimes caused
it to scroll out of range and crash or display garbage.
o The support for mitred lines encountered a Windows problem with
a dramatic slowdown if more than 1000 or so segments were
plotted in a polyline. We now plot in bunches of 1000, which
is less accurate but works around the Windows problem.
o There is a workaround for the Windows-specific problems that
Sys.putenv(TZ="GMT") was not recognized by the OS and that
Windows believes that there is such a thing as "GMT Standard
Time".
o Inno Setup >= 5.1.2 is now required to build the installer.
o For some operations on windows() and related devices the first
text drawn could be improperly sized. (PR#7860).
o R would crash when ESC was pressed during locator(). (PR#7873).
o seek() was not always reporting the correct position on files >
2Gb. (PR#7879)
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.1.0
UNCATEGORIZED
o There is no longer a miniR distribution.
o Support for seek() on > 2Gb files has been added.
o You will be asked to select a CRAN mirror when
downloading/updating packages unless options("repos") has
already been set in your session, e.g. in your .Rprofile file
or from the 'Select CRAN mirror' menu item. (In batch use,
not having set a mirror will lead to an error.) BDR's
supplementary collection is now included in the default
options("repos"): if you want to include it explicitly set
something like options(repos=c(some_cran_mirror,
http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin"))
o There is a new item on the Packages menu to set repositories,
e.g. CRAN, Bioconductor, Omegahat. You can modify the list
(and its defaults): see the rw-FAQ Q2.9. This supersedes the
menu items for Bioconductor.
o The new (in R 2.0.0) graphics pars "lend", "ljoin" and "lmitre"
are now implemented for the Windows devices.
o `Writing R Extensions' now documents how to interface a
front-end directly to R.dll, and there are some new
convenience functions for such front-ends.
o R CMD / Rcmd now set HOME if unset, e.g. for use in Rcmd check.
o The installer now offers the option (by default unchecked) of a
`quick launch icon" for R.
o par(ask = TRUE) now takes input from the graphics window, rather
than from the console.
o Rcmd REMOVE works more similarly to Unix, setting the default
library from R_LIBS if the latter is set.
o install.packages() can install source packages as well as binary
ones.
o shQuote() now defaults to type="cmd" on Windows.
o R can now be built with Unicode support on Win9x and WinME. See
src/gnuwin32/MkRules: this is currently experimental and not
needed for standard builds.
o R can now be built with support for multibyte and variable-width
character sets, e.g. for Japanese. See README.rw????. The
standard installer includes both single-byte and multi-byte
builds.
o select.list() now looks up the current font size and chooses its
window size based on that. It allows multiple preselections
if multiple=TRUE.
o The instructions for compiling packages from source and for
compiling R itself have been moved to the R Installation and
Administration manual; the PDF copy of that manual has been
added to the Rgui Help | Manuals menu list.
o The way the command history works has been changed to be more
like readline. All the commands used in a session are kept,
but only the last R_HISTSIZE (default 512) lines are saved.
The environment variable R_HISTSIZE can be changed during the
session (by Sys.putenv) as the current value is used.
o The font list in the Preferences screen has been expanded to
include fonts used in `East Asian' terminals.
o A bug with font changing in Preferences introduced with the
script editor in R 2.0.0 had been fixed. This should fix
PR#7271,7277,7749.
o Line widths on windows() devices (including win.print()) are now
interpreted as multiples of 1/96" (or the pixel size if it is
larger, as it may be for a screen device). This follows the
postscript() and pdf() drivers. It is now possible to set lwd
< 1 provided this corresponds to lines of at least one pixel
width.
**************************************************
* *
* 2.0 SERIES NEWS *
* *
**************************************************
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.0.1 patched
BUG FIXES
o We work around reported bugs in Windows XP as to which
characters are printable by attempting to print all
non-control characters when using print().
o There are now facilities (documented in file
src/gnuwin32/INSTALL) to add packages when building the R
installer, and to rebuild a customized installer from the
existing binary distribution.
o Tcl/Tk could crash Rgui during shutdown by trying to print an
error message after the console had been shut down. Such
messages are now redirected to message boxes.
o bug.report() failed to open the internal editor. We have
changed it to use file.edit() to edit the report, with the
consequence that there is no longer a "wait" parameter.
CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.0.1
GUI CHANGES
o There is a new menu item to set a CRAN mirror.
BUG FIXES
o jpeg(), png() and bmp() were not handling background colours properly.
o It seems that on some systems (but not the maintainers') Mozilla
1.7.3 requires \ not / in filepaths, so help(topic,
htmlhelp=TRUE) now uses \. (PR#7269) Hopefully no system
requires / not \ !
o Changes to help() meant that help(topic, chmhelp=TRUE) was no
longer working if `topic' was an alias. (PR#7269)
o Recent changes caused (D)COM to sometimes go into infinite loops.
o Any change in the GUI preferences via the dialog box changed
font (even if to the same font as before). This is causing
problems in MDI mode with toolbars (PR#7277), where real font
changes are not working properly.
o Control keys in Tcl/Tk windows were not handled properly; Tcl/Tk
interacted badly with Rgui in other ways as well.
o R CMD SHLIB gave spurious error messages for inputs like all.f
and all.c.
o `make recommended' was not consulting the setting of WINHELP or
HELP, so failed if HHW was not installed.
o We have increased the chances that installing a source package
from an explicit path with spaces in will work, so e.g.
R CMD INSTALL "/Documents and Settings/myname/Source Files/mypkg"
will probably work -- it is still not recommended. You can
also get away with backslashes here, but forward slashes are
safer.
o select.list(preselect=) was not working. (PR#7328)
o The graphics recording mechanism windows(record = TRUE) could
cause memory corruption.
*********************************************************
* *
* News of 1.x.y and 2.0.0 is in file `CHANGES1' *
* News of 1.0.0 and earlier is in file `CHANGES0' *
* These files are available in the source *
* distribution. *
* *
*********************************************************