How to change toolkit in Octave? - plot

My Octave crashes when I execute plot command. I found a solution in Assad Ebrahim's answer. He mentioned to switch the default toolkit to gnuplot, and change it in octave.rc file if I want to make the change permanently but I'm not clear about the permanent change in octaverc. When I open my octaverc with notepad++, it looks like this:
## System-wide startup file for Octave.
##
## This file should contain any commands that should be executed each
## time Octave starts for every user at this site.
EXEC_PATH (cstrcat (fullfile (OCTAVE_HOME, 'notepad++'), pathsep,
EXEC_PATH));
EXEC_PATH (cstrcat (fullfile (OCTAVE_HOME, 'bin'), pathsep, EXEC_PATH));
EDITOR (fullfile (OCTAVE_HOME, 'notepad++', 'notepad++.exe'));
What should I change and how?

First, the direct answer to your question is to append any command you want executed on startup to the end of the .octaverc file. So, to set a particular graphics toolkit you would add the line:
graphics_toolkit("gnuplot")
Or
graphics_toolkit("qt")
Or
graphics_toolkit("fltk")
For whichever toolkit you want.
Now, as pointed out by #Andy, if you are using Windows, it may be that you are misinterpreting a long delay for a crash. A still not entirely resolved windows bug concerns the fact that on the first plot Windows might need to create a font cache file. This can take a long time. Once this is complete, most subsequent plots will be much faster. Some info can be found about it at the following bug report page:
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?45458
EDIT: in the time since this answer was posted, the bug linked above has been largely resolved. Part of the installation process now updates the font-cache file. If using a zip package rather than an executable installer, there is a batch file that should be run after extracting octave to ensure that this is done. Details are available at:
http://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_Microsoft_Windows

Related

RDCOMClient log file

I have been using RDCOMClient for a while now to interact with vendor software. For the most part it has worked fine. Recently, however, I have the need to loop through many operations (several hundred). I am running into problems with the RDCOM.err file growing to a very large size (easily GBs). This file is put in C: with no apparent option to change that. Is there some way that I can suppress this output or specify another location for the file to go? I don't need any of the output in the file so suppressing it would be best.
EDIT: I tried to add to my script a file.remove but R has the file locked. The only way I can get the lock released is to restart R.
Thanks.
Setting the permissions to read only was going to be my suggested hack.
A slightly more elegant approach is to edit one line of the C code in the package in src/RUtils.h from
\#define errorLog(a,...) fprintf(getErrorFILE(), a, ##__VA_ARGS__); fflush(getErrorFILE());
to
\#define errorLog(a, ...) {}
However, I've pushed some simple updates to the package on github that add a writeErrors() function that one can use to toggle whether errors are written or not. So this allows this to be turned on and off dynamically.
So
library(RDCOMClient)
writeErrors(FALSE)
will turn off the error logging to the file.
I found a work around for this. I created the files C:\RDCOM.err and C:\RDCOM_server.err and marked them both as read-only. I am not sure if there is a better way to accomplish this, but for now I am running without logging.

How to run code when opening Rstudio? [duplicate]

I wrote an R function that updates the version number of a package in another question. I work a lot with GitHub and RStudio, and it would safe me quite some time (plus be much more precise) if this function was automatically run every time I opened a certain project (or better yet, make a git commit/push, but I assume that is harder to do). But I don't know how to do this or if this is even possible.
I could use .Rprofile to run R codes every time I start R, so I could just update versions whenever I start R (or build in that it only updates the version if the date is not today or something) but that seems overdoing it.
You can make a separate .Rprofile for each project. You have to put it in the main directory of the project (http://www.rstudio.com/ide/docs/using/projects).
Well I would use .Rprofile for that. There is something to be said for being independent of the tool chain around you: knitr works from RStudio as well as without it, dito for Rcpp/RInside etc pp.
You can hook into commit hooks for svn, both explicitly via hooks in the back end, or simply at your by end adding wrapper scripts. I presume you can do likewise with git but I simply know much less about it. So to abstract this away, I would write myself a 'commitThis' or 'pushThis' or ... function that does the number increment, test run, code push and what have you.
If your code needs RStudio to be already running (e.g. because it's relying on some rstudioapi:: function), putting it directly in .Rprofile won't work (.Rprofile is executed before RStudio is available).
Instead, you could set a hook for "rstudio.sessionInit":
setHook(
hookName = "rstudio.sessionInit",
action = function(newSession) {
if (newSession) {
# your code goes here
},
action = "append"
)

Rgui command-line for sourcing R file

What command line option to use behind Rgui.exe for immediately sourcing an R source file? Instead of having to type source("c:\MyGreatSource.R") manually afterwards. Something like:
Rgui.exe --source "c:\MyGreatSource.R"
Sounds like a simple question answered in any beginner's manual, but I couldn't find such an option anywhere.
I found a workable solution, maybe others are interested. Again, what I like to do is to start the Rgui and work there. All my work environment and functions are defined in an R source file, which I constantly develop further during working. So each of my commands in the GUI starts with Load1(); where Load1 is a function which simply sources my R file, to update the changes I have just made. Obviously, Load1 is also defined in my R file, so I need to get it in the first place, without much effort. I have set the command-line options for neither loading nor saving the workplace; I don't like my old mess from the previous session with test variables and so.
However, my solution now is to just create a workplace RData file which only contains the definition of my Load1 function. This workplace file is easily loaded at every start by just adding its path into the command-line options "D:\MyLoad1.RData"
I use a AutoHotkey Script
run,C:\Program Files\R\R-3.3.3\bin\x64\Rgui.exe
WinWait,RGui (64-bit)
WinWaitActive,RGui (64-bit)
Sleep 100
Send,source("%1%")
Send,{enter}

Automatically run R code when RStudio project is opened

I wrote an R function that updates the version number of a package in another question. I work a lot with GitHub and RStudio, and it would safe me quite some time (plus be much more precise) if this function was automatically run every time I opened a certain project (or better yet, make a git commit/push, but I assume that is harder to do). But I don't know how to do this or if this is even possible.
I could use .Rprofile to run R codes every time I start R, so I could just update versions whenever I start R (or build in that it only updates the version if the date is not today or something) but that seems overdoing it.
You can make a separate .Rprofile for each project. You have to put it in the main directory of the project (http://www.rstudio.com/ide/docs/using/projects).
Well I would use .Rprofile for that. There is something to be said for being independent of the tool chain around you: knitr works from RStudio as well as without it, dito for Rcpp/RInside etc pp.
You can hook into commit hooks for svn, both explicitly via hooks in the back end, or simply at your by end adding wrapper scripts. I presume you can do likewise with git but I simply know much less about it. So to abstract this away, I would write myself a 'commitThis' or 'pushThis' or ... function that does the number increment, test run, code push and what have you.
If your code needs RStudio to be already running (e.g. because it's relying on some rstudioapi:: function), putting it directly in .Rprofile won't work (.Rprofile is executed before RStudio is available).
Instead, you could set a hook for "rstudio.sessionInit":
setHook(
hookName = "rstudio.sessionInit",
action = function(newSession) {
if (newSession) {
# your code goes here
},
action = "append"
)

R2PPT crashes R; are there alternatives to R2PPT?

I am attempting to automate the insertion of JPEG images into Powerpoint. I have a macro done for that already, except using R would be infinitely better for my purposes.
The package R2PPT should do this, I understand. However, I cannot use it. For example, when I try to use PPT.Open, I understand I can do it two different ways by calling method = "rcom" or method = "RDCOMClient". Using the latter, R will always crash, sending an error report to windows. Using the former, it tells me I need to install statconnDCOM , before giving the error:
Error in PPT.Open(x) : attempt to apply non-function.
I cannot install statconnDCOM freely, as I wouldn't call this work non-commercial. So if there isn't a way to get around this issue, are there at least some free alternatives to R2PPT so that I can save several hours of manual work with a simple R code? If there is a way for me to use R2PPT, that would be ideal.
Thanks!
Edit:
I'm using R version 2.15 and downloaded the most recent version of R2PPT. Powerpoint is 2007.
Do you have administrative privileges on this machine?
There is an issue with package RDCOMClient. It needs permissions to write file rdcom.err in the root of drive C:. If you don't have privileges to write to c:, there is a rather cumbersome workaround:
Close R
Create "c:\temp" folder if it doesn't exist.
Locate on your hard drive file rdcomclient.dll. It usually placed in \R\library\RDCOMClient\libs\i386\ and in \R\library\RDCOMClient\libs\x64\ (you need to patch file which corresponds your Windows version - 32 bit or 64 bit). It's recommended to make backup copy of this files before patching.
Open rdcomclient.dll in text editor (Notepad++, for example -http://notepad-plus-plus.org/)
Find in file string c:\rdcom.err - it occurs only once.
Go into overwrite mode (usually by pressing "Ins" key). It is very important that new path will have the same number of characters as original one. Type C:\temp\e.rr instead of c:\rdcom.err
Save the file.
Now all should work fine.
Arguably not an answer, but have you looked at using Sweave/knitr to render your presentations in LaTeX using something like Beamer? (As discussed on slide 17 here.)
Wouldn't help any with getting JPGs into a PowerPoint, but would certainly make putting R-output (numerical or graphical) into a presentation much easier!
Edit: if you want to use knitr (which I recommend), here's another reference.

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