The R Project SVN R

Frequently Asked Questions for R for Windows 0.64.x
===================================================

This FAQ is for the Windows port of R: it describes features specific
to that version. The main R FAQ can be found at

http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html

There are two versions of R for Windows, but only is under active 
development, that described here. It is often called something like
rw0640 (although not officially).



1) Installation and Usage
=========================

1.1) Where can I find the latest version?

Go to any CRAN site (see http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/R/mirrors.html
for a list), navigate to the bin/windows/windows-NT/base directory and
collect the files you need.  You will need at least the files

    rw064?b.zip rw064?h.zip

and will probably want rw064?w.zip (the HTML format help files).


1.2) How do I install R for Windows?

First, you need Windows 95 or 98 or NT4 (or possibly earlier): Windows
3.11+win32s will not work. Your file system must allow long file names
(as is likely except perhaps for some network-mounted systems).

Choose a location and unzip the zip files (with a tool that
preserves long file names and the directory structure: we recommend
the INFO-ZIP project's unzip).  All the files will unpack into a
directory called rw06xx, for some `xx'.

Choosing a working directory for R.  Make a shortcut to
rw06xx\bin\Rgui.exe on your desktop or somewhere on the Start file
tree. Right-click the shortcut, select Properties... and change the 
`Start in' field to your working directory.

You may also want to add command-line arguments at the end of the
Target field.  We use --vsize 10M --nsize 250000. (For rw0632 or earlier,
use 10 rather than 10M.)


1.3) How do I run it?

Just double-click on the shortcut you prepared at installation.

If you want to set up another project, make a new shortcut or use the
existing one, and change the `Start in' field of the Properties.


1.4) I am using Windows NT and I get a GPF when I try to start rgui.exe
   or rterm.exe for the command line.

This happened prior to rw0633.  Try giving the full path to the
executable when you start it up.  We know this will not work with the
Cygwin bash shell unless the Cygwin and Windows path names are the
same.

We believe this is completely solved in rw0633 and later: please upgrade.


1.5) How can I manage my work keeping workspaces for different projects
   in different directories?

Create a separate shortcut for each project: see Q1.3.  All the paths to
files used by R are relative to the starting directory, so setting the
`Start in' field automatically helps separate projects.


1.6) How do I print from R?

It depends what you want to print.

-- You can print the graphics window from its menu or by using dev.print().

-- The way to print from the R console is to select the text you want,
   copy it (from the Edit menu or via Ctrl-C) and paste it into an
   editor (e.g. notepad) and print from there.

-- You can print help files from the HTML browser.

-- If you have configured RHOME/bin/helpPRINT.bat and have latex installed
   you can print help files by help(fn_name, offline=T).


1.7) Can I use R BATCH?

No, but you can set up a batch file using rterm.exe. A sample batch
file might contain (as one line)

path_to_R\bin\rterm.exe --vsize 10M --nsize 250k --no-restore
   --no-save %1 > %1.out


1.8) Can I use rw0xx with ESS and emacs?

Yes. Some time soon versions of ESS (5.1.3 had a `somewhat rough'
prototype for rw0632) will come with support for this version of R. If
yours does not, edit essd-r.el to have

    (inferior-ess-start-args       . "--ess"))

and make sure you give the full path to Rterm.exe as the R executable.
(You can add other flags like --vsize 10M after -ess.)



2) Packages
===========

2.1) Can I install packages (libraries) in this version?

Yes, of course.  The easy way is to see if a pre-compiled binary
version of the package is available: look on CRAN at
bin/windows/windows-NT/contrib. If there is, download the zip file and
unpack it in the rw06xx\library directory, using unzip or similar.

If there is not a binary version or that is not up-to-date or you prefer
compiling from source, get rw06xxsp.zip from the distribution (see Q1.1)
and unpack it in rw06xx.  Then cd src\gnuwin32 and read
README.packages.  You will need to collect and install several tools
to use this. Once you have done so, installation is easy: just run
`make pkg-pkgname'.


2.2) I don't have permission to write to the rw06xx\library directory.
     Is this fatal?

You can install packages anywhere and use the environment variable
RLIBS to point to the library location(s). You can also set the R variable
`.lib.loc' in your .Rprofile or when running R.

Suppose your packages are in installed in p:\mylibs.  Then you can EITHER

    set RLIBS to p:\mylibs

OR put in the .Rprofile in the working directory or your home directory

    .lib.loc <- c("p:/mylibs", .Library)

OR use a package by, e.g.

    library(MASS, lib.loc="p:/mylibs")

How you set an environment variable is system specific: in 9x you can
set them in autoexec.bat or in an MS-DOS window from which you launch
Rgui/Rterm.  Under NT you can use the control panel.

You can also build packages anywhere, but that is much trickier: it is
simpler to install a private copy of R to do the building.


2.3) The packages I installed do not appear in the HTML help system.

HTML help only works for packages installed in rw06xx\library.

(Information for rw0633 or later) To update the HTML help files after
you have installed a binary package, run

> link.html.help()

at the R prompt. (The source-code installation does this
automatically, and if you have that installed you can use (preferably)

    cd rw06xx\src\gnuwin32\help
    make indices

instead.)


2.4) The functions in the packages I installed are not found by the
     HTML help search system.

The following conditions need to hold:

-- the package is installed in rw06xx\library.

-- you are using rw0633 or later.

-- the package contains a CONTENTS file in top-level directory (most of the 
   binary distributions do not).

-- you updated the indices as described in the answer to Q2.2 after 
   installing the package.

If those all hold true, this works for us.



3) Windows Features
===================

3.1) What should I expect to behave differently from the Unix/GNU-Linux
     version of R?

- R commands can be interrupted by Esc in rgui.exe and Ctrl-break in
  rterm.exe: Ctrl-C is used for copying in the GUI version.

- Command-line editing is always available, but is much simpler
  than the readline-based editing on Unix. For rgui.exe,
  the menu item `Help | Console' will give details.

- The commands history is saved between sessions only on rgui.exe,
  and it is always saved.

- Using help.start() does not automatically send help requests to the
  browser: use options(htmlhelp=T) to turn this on.

- The HTML help system can only access packages installed in the
  standard place.

- Paths to files (e.g. in source()) can be specified with either "/" or "\\".

- system() is slightly different: see its help page.


3.2) I hear about some nifty features: please tell me about them!

You have read the README?  There are file menus on both the R console
and on graphics windows.  You can source and save from those menus,
and copy the graphics to gif, postscript or metafile. The graphics has
a history mechanism. As the README says:

   `The History menu allows the recording of plots. When plots have been
   recorded they can be reviewed by PgUp and PgDn, saved and replaced.
   Recording can be turned on automatically (the Recording item on the
   list) or individual plots can be added (Add or the INS key).  The
   whole plot history can be saved to or retrieved from an R variable in
   the global environment.

   There is only one graphics history shared by all the x11 devices.'

The R console and graphics windows have configuration files stored in
the RHOME\etc directory called Rconsole and (rw0633 and later) Rdevga;
you can keep personal copies in your HOME directory.  They contain
comments which should suffice for you to edit them to your
preferences.  For more details see ?Rconsole.



4) Workspaces
=============

4.1) My workspace gets saved in a strange place: how do I stop this?

Have you changed the working directory?: see Q4.2.

Prior to rw0633, using the file dialog boxes from the menus to
navigate the file system changes the working directory. Either don't
use them, or use the `Source file' menu item and navigate back to
where you want the workspace (.RData) saved before quitting Rgui.


4.2) How do I store my workspace in a different place?

Use the `File | Change' Dir menu item to select a new working directory:
this defaults to the last directory you loaded a file from. The
workspace is saved in the working directory.


4.3) Can I load workspaces saved under Unix/GNU-Linux?

Yes, on rw0633 or later.



5) The R Console and Fonts
==========================

5.1) I would like to be able to use Japanese fonts in the console and
    to annotate graphs.

We believe this is possible by setting suitable fonts in the Rconsole
and Rdevga configuration files (see Q3.2). You can specify additional
fonts in Rdevga, and use them by par(font=, font.lab=, font.main=,
font.sub=).  Nineteen fonts are specified (as 1 to 19) by default: you
can add to these (up to 13 more) or replace them.


5.2) I don't see characters with accents at the R console, for example
    in ?text.

You need to specify a font in Rconsole (see Q3.2) that supports latin1
encoding. The default, Courier New, does on our systems, as does
FixedSys. This may be a problem in other locales, especially for
non-Western European languages.


5.3) When using Rgui, the output to the console seems to be delayed.

This is deliberate: the console output is buffered and re-written in
chunks to be less distracting. You can turn buffering off or on from the
Misc menu: Ctrl-W toggles the setting.

If you are sourcing R code or writing from a function, there is
another option. A call to the R function flush.console() will write
out the buffer. 



6) Building from Source
=======================

6.1) Can I compile R from source?

Get the R sources and the corresponding file rw06xxs.zip from the
distribution (see Q1.1).  Suppose you want to compile R-0.64.0.

   tar zxvf R-0.64.0.tgz   (ignore warnings about aux)
   cd R-0.64.0
   unzip ...\rw0640s
   cd src\gnuwin32

Now read the README and set up all the tools needed. Then you can just
use `make', sit back and wait.  (A complete build takes about 15
minutes on a 300MHz PII with a fast local disc.)  To keep only the
help files in zip files, use

   make ziponly-base

You do need to compile under a case-honouring file system: we found
that a samba-mounted file system (which maps all file names to lower case)
did not work.


6.2) How do I debug code that I have compiled and dyn.load-ed?

To be written.



Brian Ripley <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk>
Guido Masarotto <guido@hal.stat.unipd.it>