thanks Robin. I'm forwarding this to the ESS-help list so that others can see the solution to using X11 under R 2.3.0 with ESS. Stephen Robin Hankin writes: > Hi guys. > > > problem was solved with > > > Sys.putenv(DISPLAY=":0.0") > X11() > > > (posted on the R-SIG-Mac mailing list by Simon Urbanek and Matt Cohen).