Quartz vs. R in ESS

Here is the problem: It is nice to use R as an inferior process within emacs via ESS. Unfortunately this means that on Mac OS X, the quartz device which draws the plots is unavailable. What to do?

It appears that there are currently (as of Monday, January 31, 2005) two solutions:

• Use the X11 window server. When the urge overcomes you to make some plots,
  1. Start the X11 server. If you don't have it (it is installed in /Applications/Utilities), you can get it from Apple
  2. Enter the command X11(display="localhost:0.0")
  The plots will not be nearly as nice as those in the quartz device, but if you really want print files, you should change the device to the pdf device. (Information and complete story here.
• Go get Jan DeLeeuw's version of R with batteries. It will allow you to run the quartz device from the command line or Emacs, but then will prevent you from using the current Cocoa R.app which comes from CRAN.

Pick your poison!