[R] [Rd] R/Sweave/cairo/freetype bug fix.

[Hin-Tak Leung]

"... was committed to freetype in January and will form the next release (2.4.12)". 



------------------------------
On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 18:54 GMT Simon Urbanek wrote:

>On Mar 30, 2013, at 9:24 AM, Hin-Tak Leung wrote:
>
>> Perhaps that's too much details. There is (will be) a new freetype because of cairo's unanticipated usage (which R uses, among other cairo users). Most people should upgrade or request an upgrade eventually, when they are comfortable.
>> 
>
>Which versions are affected? R binary for OS X uses freetype 2.4.11 (and cairo 1.12.14) so I just need to know if there is an action item.
>
>Thanks,
>SImon
>
>
>
>> --- On Sat, 30/3/13, peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Huh?
>> 
>> This is utterly incomprehensible without reading the redhat
>> bugzilla, and even after reading, I'm not sure what the
>> issue is. Something with bold Chinese fonts in X11, but
>> maybe also affecting Latin fonts, ....?
>> 
>> Please explain yourself.
>> 
>> -pd
>> 
>> On Mar 30, 2013, at 09:25 , Hin-Tak Leung wrote:
>> 
>>> The problem was first seen with R/Sweave (#c0) then
>> reproduced directly with cairo (#c10) and was eventually
>> traced to freetype. The 5-part bug fix:
>>> 610ee58e07090ead529849b2a454bb6c503b4995
>>> da11e5e7647b668dee46fd0418ea5ecbc33ae3b2
>>> e1a2ac1900f2f16ec48fb4840a6b7965a8373c2b
>>> 869fb8c49ddf292d6daf4826172a308973d3e11f
>>> d56e544d653b09c657911629557ffc5277a503e3
>>> was committed to freetype in January and will form the
>> next release (2.4.12). They were back ported to 2.4.11
>>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=891457#c35
>>> and the redhat people had further back-ported it to
>> 2.4.10 for fedora 18/19 (#c51).
>>> 
>>> The freetype people had reproduced the problem with a
>> latin font, so this affects most people, unlike what the
>> initial report (#c0) suggests.
>>> 
>>> Since freetype is part of X11, most unix/linux users
>> would be understandably nervous about breaking X (see #c45
>> for screenshot of broken gnome terminal!) and should wait up
>> to a year before the new and not-yet-released 2.4.12 becomes
>> an official upgrade; or contact their favourite unix vendors
>> and/or Apple for upgrades. AFAIK, current up-to-date linux
>> distributions ships the rather older 2.4.10, with the
>> exception of fedora 18/19 (#c51). Mac OS X 10.5 ships
>> freetype 2.3.5 as part of X11; I haven't bother looking up
>> later Mac OS X's.
>>> 
>>> The official R binaries for windows and mac OS X are
>> compiled against static libraries of cairo 1.10.2 (over 2
>> years old), and cairo 1.11.2 and freetype 2.4.4
>> respectively, and are firmly in the "do not work correctly"
>> category.
>>> 
>>> The long and short of the story is that R/Sweave uses a
>> feature of cairo which wasn't implemented before cairo
>> 1.11.2 (#c13, Jan 2011), which in turn depends on a feature
>> of freetype that has been around since 2005 but did not
>> anticipate cairo's usage. It is commendable that the
>> freetype people did not refer to cairo's usage as "misuse"
>> but took the patience to address the problem, unlike some
>> group's style.
>>> 
>>> It has been an interesting few months returning to
>> freetype after about 17 years, I think.
>>> 
>>> Here is how to look up what version of freetype -
>> libfreetype.so.x.y.z for most unix platforms, and
>> /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.x.y.z.dylib on Mac OS X:
>>> 
>>> (excerpt from docs/VERSION.DLL)
>>> 
>>>      version   
>> x.y.z   date of release
>>>      2.4.11 
>>    6.10.0  Dec 2012
>>>      2.4.10 
>>    6.9.0   June 2012
>>>      2.4.9     
>> 6.8.1   March 2012
>>> ...
>>>      2.4.4     
>> 6.6.2   Nov 2010  (official R mac
>> binaries)
>>> ...
>>>      2.3.5     
>> 6.3.16  July 2007 (Mac OS X 10.5)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-devel at r-project.org
>> mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>> 
>> -- 
>> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
>> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
>> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
>> Phone: (+45)38153501
>> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk 
>> Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>> 
>> 
>