[R] convert command not found in movie3d (rgl package) in Mac OS X

[David Winsemius]

On Jan 23, 2012, at 5:50 AM, Manabu Sakamoto wrote:

> Dear list,
> 
> I gave up trying to fix my movie3d (rgl library) issue in my PC
> (completely black gif/png file) and went ahead and installed MacPorts
> and ImageMagick onto my iMac (OSX ver 10.6.8). I think ImageMagick is
> successfully installed in its default location (under /opt/local),

I'm not sure it has a default location, but if you are using a package management system, then there might be a default location for all the packages installed in that manner.

> and
> I ran movie3d but I get the following error:
> 
> Error in system("convert --version", intern = TRUE) :
>   error in running command
> sh: convert: command not found
> 
> so I'm guessing R can't find the "convert" executable file, which is
> in "Sys.getenv("PATH")", in its system search path, which I presume is
> "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin" that I got using
> Sys.getenv("PATH").
> 
> Does anyone know how I can resolve this? For instance, should I move
> or copy the convert executable file to an appropriate directory (which
> I don't really know where exactly, i.e. I can't find a folder "usr" in
> the Macintosh HD),


The /usr/ directory is hidden and not displayed by the default settings of the Finder.app, but you should be able to change those settings if you da a Google search and use Terminal.app to start up a bash shell   or you can use Terminal.app and type these two lines:

cd /
ls

> 
> or can I add "/opt/local/bin" to the R's search
> path?

I'm not sure whether executing:

 Sys.setenv("PATH") <- paste(Sys.getenv("PATH"), ":/opt/local")

... will necessarily cause success with a system()-mediated call, since my fragile understanding is that the system()-calls use the bash shell which has a different PATH variable than does R called from R.app which is what I suspect you are using.

This is probably better addressed to the R-SIG-Mac mailing list and you will need to subscribe:

r-sig-mac R <r-sig-mac at r-project.org>



> best regards,
> Manabu
> 
> -- 
> Manabu Sakamoto, PhD
> School of Earth Sciences
> University of Bristol
> manabu.sakamoto at gmail.com
> 
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David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA