interactive() is problematic for "my" typical usecase

[kostrzewa]

They way I use R makes the usage of interactive() a bit problematic. My analysis drivers have loads of parameters in order to be suitable for different analyses (as far as that is possible) and as a result I generally run them from an interactive session. It would be helpful for me if interactivity as a reason for calling X11() to get new windows could be an internal state rather than what is reported by interactive(). What do you think?

[urbach]

so you mean an additional parameter?

I usually run Rscript...

[kostrzewa]

I usually run Rscript...

That doesn't really work for me since my drivers are themselves functions, I guess I could write further R scripts which call the drivers, rather than calling them "interactively". I guess that would even be a good way to keep track of the exact parameters used for a given analysis. Lemme think about it and I'l get back to you.

so you mean an additional parameter?

I guess so, but more usefully it could also be done through the options() framework, with the default as TRUE and this can then be handled locally for the various cases where you've used interactive()

if( (is.null(getOption("hadron.interactive")) || getOption("hadron.interactive")) && interactive()) { x11() }

or something like that. The is.null() would ensure backwards compatibility.

[kostrzewa]

I would really like to re-iterate this point. I don't think that a plot routine should open new devices...

[urbach]

I don't see, why not. There is no other way to have multiple X11 plots opened by a single plot function. However, I see your point. So, what about something like the following additional condtions to interactive()

grepl("X11", names(dev.cur()), ignore.case=TRUE) || grepl("null", names(dev.cur()), ignore.case=TRUE)

to only open a new window if there is no other driver used than X11?

[urbach]

See commit 82aed14 ...

[urbach]

in urbach/hadron master branch

[urbach]

this is fixed now, isn't it?

[kostrzewa]

Yes, I think so, I'll close the issue.