On 15 November 2006 at 19:52, Marc Glisse wrote:
| On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
|
| > | R_PAPERSIZE_USER=${R_PAPERSIZE}
| > | R_PAPERSIZE=${R_PAPERSIZE-'a4'}
| > | which uses a4 by default unless the user specified a R_PAPERSIZE setting
| > | (seems to me that PAPERSIZE would be more standard, but never mind)
| >
| > That is not desirable as many users would object to having a default of a4.
|
| of course here a4 meant the value returned by paperconf at install time.
|
| > Thanks to Debian's paperconfig package, they will get e.g. letter if that is
| > what their system has.
| >
| > That is the correct behaviour: respect the locale and user setting
| > automatically and do not require environment variables to function.
|
| But that is not what you are doing (in your version locale is ignored).
|
| > Are you requesting an easily overridable switch on top of the sane defaults?
|
| Yes (that is what the upstream package does, which is documented in NEWS).
| For multi-user servers it can make sense.
|
| > Or do you want letter (even though you answered my questions about your
paper
| > preferences with a4 ...).
| >
| > If you just want a one-off fix, why not set
| >
| > options("papersize"="letter")
| >
| > in your script?
|
| Ok I know there are several other ways to fix that, and the ~/.Renviron
| solution is good enough for me. But then R contains unused code and does
| not act as documented.
|
| > | So there are basically 2 choices:
| > | 1) act as documented in the R NEWS file (R_PAPERSIZE then LC_PAPER)
| >
| > and have broken default behaviour (a4 everywhere) ?
|
| Er no, it uses R_PAPERSIZE if set, letter if LC_PAPER contains _US or _CA,
| and a4 otherwise, which is already better than a4 everywhere.
Well, still gives me letter here in Chicago which I consider a bug. I like my
solution better...
| > | 2) act as we used to (R_PAPERSIZE then paperconf)
| >
| > but that broke with R 2.4.0, didn't it?
|
| Er, I don't think so, and I explain in the other email how to achieve
| this. Why would this be broken?
I did some tests between your bug report and the first package upload with
the fix, and I could not get this to work.
| > | > 1) act as documented in the R NEWS file (R_PAPERSIZE then LC_PAPER)
| > |
| > | R_PAPERSIZE_USER=${R_PAPERSIZE}
| >
| > But R_PAPERSIZE is unset, so what does this achieve ?
|
| It achieves what is documented in the NEWS file.
|
| > | > 2) act as we used to (R_PAPERSIZE then paperconf)
| > |
| > | R_PAPERSIZE_USER=${R_PAPERSIZE-'a4'}
| > | where a4 is the output ofpaperconf.
| >
| > Yes, I could rewrite the postinst write
| >
| > R_PAPERSIZE_USER=${R_PAPERSIZE-'
| >
| > followed by what paperconf says, followed by '} to close.
|
| (*)
| That would mean going back to the old behavior (and ignoring the locale),
| which is fine.
|
| > | In both cases, there should be no need for the additional R_PAPERSIZE=
| > | line but it does not hurt if it stays there (the code reading it should
| > | never be reached since we have LC_PAPER, but you never know if someone
| > | might set it to ''). I have not tested.
| >
| > I use a US keyboard and no locale settings, so I have no LC_PAPER by
default.
|
| so locale probably answers "POSIX" or "C" (not "") and you get a4 by
| default, nothing wrong here (well _you_ would probably prefer letter, but
Sure wrong. All printers on this continent use letter.
| you should set LANG to en_US if you expect american defaults).
I didn't need it so far and everything just works.
| In conclusion, I would be fine with either (*) or documenting the fact
| that one is supposed to define R_PAPERSIZE_USER in ~/.Renviron to override
| the default papersize (right now, a user trying to override it will read
| the doc and try setting an environment variable or a locale). Or with
| actually doing nothing and expecting users can take a look at
| /etc/R/Renviron and deduce what they are supposed to do.
|
| Ok I wrote a lot of useless things today... Sorry for taking so much of
| your time...
I appreciate your effort, but I still do not think we have improved
things manifestedly.
One choice I see is to change /etc/R/Renviron to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~> grep PAPERSIZE /etc/R/Renviron
## Default printer paper size: first record if user set R_PAPERSIZE
R_PAPERSIZE_USER=${R_PAPERSIZE_USER-'letter'}
R_PAPERSIZE=${R_PAPERSIZE-'letter'}
where the first 'letter' is filled in at configuration time. That way it is
still overrideable:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~> r -e 'print(options("papersize"))'
$papersize
[1] "letter"
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~> R_PAPERSIZE_USER=a4 r -e
'print(options("papersize"))'
$papersize
[1] "a4"
Is that ok by you?
Dirk
--
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.
-- Thomas A. Edison
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