R devel - Apr 2006 - R_PAPERSIZE and LC_PAPER

R uses the environment variable R_PAPERSIZE to set its papersize, e.g. for 
postscript.

It seems the modern way is to via LC_PAPER, e.g.

http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/2002-05/msg00010.html

and Googling will show that people expect this to work.

However, that is not set on my FC3 system, and it would affect people who 
use en_US as their locale in, say, Austria.

Should we be making use of LC_PAPER, or would it just cause further 
complications?  (On Windows, the locale name is used to set the default 
papersize, but there it is unlikely to be set inappropriately.)

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 08:09 +0100, Prof Brian Ripley
wrote:
> R uses the environment variable R_PAPERSIZE to set its papersize, e.g. for 
> postscript.
> 
> It seems the modern way is to via LC_PAPER, e.g.
> 
> http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/2002-05/msg00010.html
> 
> and Googling will show that people expect this to work.
> 
> However, that is not set on my FC3 system, and it would affect people who 
> use en_US as their locale in, say, Austria.
> 
> Should we be making use of LC_PAPER, or would it just cause further 
> complications?  (On Windows, the locale name is used to set the default 
> papersize, but there it is unlikely to be set inappropriately.)

Here's my 0.0162 Euros (at current conversion rates):

For R 2.4.0, announce that LC_PAPER will become the default environment
variable used to set the default R papersize and then not set
R_PAPERSIZE by default (ie. in build scripts, etc.)

However, If someone sets R_PAPERSIZE in their site or local profile,
this will supercede the LC_PAPER setting. This would allow for a R
setting that may need to be different than the system default.

Doing this for 2.4.0 (as opposed to 2.3.x) would give folks notice and
time to consider the impact on their local installations and code, while
enabling future users to take advantage of the standard.

I think that in general, R should abide by published standards unless
there are very compelling reasons not to.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz