as I said, the current state of X11 seems OK to me. it's in the bits and pieces were some things could need a caring hand and generally, my mail was more a pledge to keep X11 support in focus in the future. specifically, I mentioned the 'sync' between utility/command and manpage and partly even missing manpage (no example at hand, I only notice them by and then when really searching for something).
more generally, I'm also concerned with command line support in such a way that HFS+ specifics are handled gracefully in all cases. another example is behaviour of `.Xauthority': completely unreproducible but with finite probability (say every two weeks) my G5 comes up from sleep and the X11 server refuses access so I can't open a new xterm, say. only copying over the old state of .Xauthority from the evening before (which I have started to copy via a script prior to sleep) reestablishes the access. I'm not sure, if this is a specific mac problem, but it looks that way. regards, joerg On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 12:21:54PM -0400, Simon Urbanek wrote: > I'm a bit puzzled about the X11-related statements here. Both > mentioned "better X11 support" - what is really missing in Apple's > X11? So far I have found Apple's X11 very enjoyable for all > scientific purposes and much easier to work with that other 3rd-party > X11 implementations. > > As for installing X11, yes, I would welcome if it was in included the > standard install mode, but it is in no way hidden: all Mac OS X > installation DVDs have it and you only have to start the Mac OS X > installer - one double-click, that's all. (Besides, rumor has it that > this may change for Leopard anyway.) For a class, why not just supply > the package? > > Concerning R itself, my only worry (and a big headache) is the lack > of Fortran support in Xcode. We have to install parallel compilers > and system libraries which is a maintenance nightmare... > > Cheers, > Simon > > On Mar 21, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Dan Putler wrote: > > >Hi, > > > >Let me second Joerg van den Hoff's call for better X11 support. I'm > >using R via a modified version of the R Commander GUI (that uses the > >tcltk package, which requires X11 on the OS X platform) in a couple > >of different classes. One thing that I found frustrating is that > >Apple seems to be going to greater lengths overtime to hide the > >X11user.pkg. This makes installing R on OS X seem really complicated > >to students. The installation of the course software is comparatively > >much more straightforward on the Windows side, leaving the > >unfortunate impression that Windows is more suited to statistical > >computing. > > > >Dan > > > >On 21-Mar-07, at 4:49 AM, Joerg van den Hoff wrote: > > > >>On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 07:37:14PM -0400, Geoffrey Hutchison wrote: > >>> > >>>Hello fellow R users! > >>> > >>>I'm currently serving as a committee member at MacResearch.org, a > >>>website devoted to science, math, and statistics on Macs. In about > >>>two weeks, we'll be visiting Apple to talk about issues, needs, > >>>desires of science users and developers: > >>>http://www.macresearch.org/ > >>>macresearch_science_related_requests_for_apple > >>> > >>>So I was writing to ask if you have particular questions or concerns > >>>which I can proxy? I think this is particularly important, since > >>>none > >>>of the other MacResearch representatives are statistics folks. > >>>(I'm a > >>>chemist -- I'm a happy user of R for data exploration and analysis.) > >>> > >>>For example, are all the R.app compiler problems solved? Do we need > >>>graphing/plotting libraries for visualization from Apple? What > >>>feedback can I pass along? > >>> > >>>Many thanks, > >>>-Geoff > >> > >>hello, > >> > >>I don't have a R- specific issue. what I _can_ say is, that for > >>Macs to be > >>accepted in scientific environments it's mandatory, that the bare > >>bones UNIX > >>side of OSX, notably full screen X11 is working competitivly to, > >>say, LINUX or > >>FreeBSD machines. for scientific purposes I find the combination of > >>some Aqua > >>apps and many X11 apps and UNIX utilities especially helpful and > >>superior to > >>using anything else. > >> > >>right now X11 is OK (but not optimal), but I don't know, how the > >>future support > >>for that area will look like. > >> > >>so if you could transport the message, that many many tools require > >>X11 and > >>many scientists are UNIX 'addicts', this might help (although they > >>sshould know). > >> > >>what I have noted is, that e.g. manpage support is no good: it > >>seems that > >>quite a few of them are out of sync with the actual state of affairs. > >> > >>one specific wish would be a 'canonical' rsync supporting HFS+ > >>stuff, such > >>as aliases, too. (they did it with `cp', for instance). same for > >>other UNIX > >>utilities which copy data (dd, tar, ...). > >> > >>joerg > >> > >>_______________________________________________ > >>R-SIG-Mac mailing list > >>[email protected] > >>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac > > > >_______________________________________________ > >R-SIG-Mac mailing list > >[email protected] > >https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac > > > > > _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
