[R] Error: X11 cannot allocate additional graphics colours.

[michael watson (IAH-C)]

Dear All

Another one I have touched on before with a much older OS and version.

My sessionInfo() is:
> sessionInfo()
R version 2.5.1 (2007-06-27) 
i686-redhat-linux-gnu 

locale:
LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_COLLATE=en_GB.U
TF-8;LC_MONETARY=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-
8;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_ID
ENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] "stats"     "graphics"  "grDevices" "utils"     "datasets"
"methods"  
[7] "base"     

other attached packages:
DetectiV 
   "1.1" 

I'm getting the following error message when plotting a quite complex
graph:

Error in axis(side = 2, at = c(min[i] - sptl, max[i] + sptl), labels =
NA,  : 
        Error: X11 cannot allocate additional graphics colours.
Consider using X11 with colortype="pseudo.cube" or "gray".

The problem is I only get it under certain circumstances.  I have some
quite convoluted test code:

n <- 82
mat <- matrix(rnorm(n*10), ncol=n)
fcolors <- terrain.colors(n)
image(z=mat, axes=FALSE)
oneis <- 1 / ncol(mat)
sptl <- oneis / 3
max <- 1:n * oneis
min <- c(0, max[1:length(max)-1])
for (i in 1:n) {
	axis(side=2, at=c(min[i]-sptl,max[i]+sptl), labels=NA, line=0.9,
lwd=3, lty=1, tick=TRUE, tck=0, col=fcolors[i],lend=2)
}

Now, this code works without error on values of n up to and including
81, but produces the error when it is 82:

Error in axis(side = 2, at = c(min[i] - sptl, max[i] + sptl), labels =
NA,  : 
        Error: X11 cannot allocate additional graphics colours.
Consider using X11 with colortype="pseudo.cube" or "gray".

The issue I have with it is that if I do a normal plot operation, I
don't get the error!

n <- 82
fcolors <- terrain.colors(n)
plot(1:n,1:n, col=fcolors)

Here the plot works, there are no errors and the colours come out fine.
But when I use the axis command, in the more complex code above, I get
an error.

The real question I want to know is how can I enable R (or my OS) to
plot a greater number of colours?  I can plot 820 colours on R under
windows, probably more, I just plucked 820 out of the air.  I'm guessing
this is because my windows graphics card can produce that many colours,
whereas on linux I am limited by what x-windows can produce, but there
must be some way of increasing the number of colours I can plot using R
under linux...?

Many thanks
Mick

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