[R] R 3.4.4, internet access fails on Windows XP

[Holger Taschenberger]

Dear Duncan,

        thank you for your reply.

On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 11:58:15 -0400
Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:

 
> The Windows FAQ 2.2 says, "Windows XP is no longer supported", so I think you're out of luck.  XP went past "end-of-life" in 2014.
> 

on <https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/README.R-3.4.4> it says

"R 3.4.4 for Windows
===================

This distribution contains a binary distribution of R-3.4.4 to run on
Windows XP and later (including 64-bit versions of Windows) on ix86
and x86_64 chips."

> Other than switching to a more recent Windows version, your choices are switching to a completely different OS, or switching to an older version of R.

R i386 runs without problems on Windows XP up to and including version 3.4.2.
Only R i386 3.4.3 & R i386 3.4.4 cannot access the internet on my Windows XP.

I supposed this is not so much a problem with the OS (because "IdnToAscii" exists on WindowsXP SP3 as well), but rather with the header files and/or import libraries of the MinGW environment.

Perhaps it does not take too much effort to restore WindowsXP compatibility. The described symptoms are at least easy to debug.

I know that WindowsXP is no longer supported by Microsoft. However, I work in an academic environment and we are stuck to Windows XP on some computers because some of our data acquisition devices are only properly supported on that OS.

Regardless of your conclusion, I'm thankful to the R developer team to make the R software freely available to the scientific community.

With kind regards,
        Holger