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dfsp-spirit / fsbrain

R library for structural neuroimaging. Provides high-level functions to access (read and write) and visualize surface-based brain morphometry data for individuals and groups.
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MacOS support of fsbrain #47

Closed dfsp-spirit closed 1 year ago

dfsp-spirit commented 1 year ago

Problem: There are increasing numbers of technical problems being reported under Mac OS, and I do not have access to a Mac anymore since I changed labs.

The issues are all downstream rgl problems, where no figures are shown (e.g., #46, #37) or similar issues.

I feel that since OpenGL is not officially supported by Apple anymore, it is a matter of time when we will stop supporting MacOS. The problem is that rgl, the renderer used by fsbrain, is based on OpenGL. I am not aware of any alternative renderer we could use under MacOS. If people have ideas, please let me know. That being said, even though OpenGL has been deprecated, it should still work right now, but we will have to come up with an idea for the future.

I considered writing a renderer myself (or rather wrapping an existing C++ renderer into an R package), but given that I am currently leaving R behind for Python and Julia, this seems to be way too much work. For now, we will wait what the R community comes up with.

dmurdoch commented 1 year ago

I think OpenGL is unlikely to disappear on MacOS. It is in XQuartz, which is unsupported by Apple, but seems to be still alive as a contributed project. But if it does disappear, I think it's unlikely that WebGL will also go, and rgl supports that too.

dfsp-spirit commented 1 year ago

That's good news. And yes, XQuartz seems very active. I am closing this for now.