R devel - Sep 2006 - Unable to save a plot containing Chinese (two-byte) Characters (PR#9201)

Full_Name: Pavel Stranak
Version: 2.3.1
OS: Mac OS X
Submission from: (NULL) (195.113.20.81)


Whenever I draw a plot containing Chinese character, it draws fine on screen,
but never saves to a file.
It does not matter, whether I first draw it on screen and than save or draw
straight to pdf.
It is also all the same, whether the characters are in label or in the plot
itself (via "pch=..." or text()).
The Error is always: "conversion failure in 'mbcsToSbcs' "

This is an example:

plot(1:20, 1:20, main="汉语 Derivational
Characters' Productivity")
# it draws well, I attempt to 'Save As...' in GUI

Error in dev.copy(device = pdf, file =
"/Users/pavel/Desktop/hanyu.pdf",  :
	conversion failure in 'mbcsToSbcs'

Please can we have a full reproducible example, including the locales 
used, and exactly how you 'saved' the plot?  (As we do ask.)

If Chinese characters are 'two-byte', then this likely will not work
(but
at least European locales on MacOS X are UTF-8, so I expected Chinese ones 
to be also).

The issues are discussed in an article in the May 2006 R-News.  You do 
need to set up a suitable family to support Chinese, and the error message 
suggests that you have failed to do so: if so this is not a bug in R.

On Mon, 4 Sep 2006, stranak at ufal.ms.mff.cuni.cz wrote:
> Full_Name: Pavel Stranak
> Version: 2.3.1
> OS: Mac OS X
> Submission from: (NULL) (195.113.20.81)
> 
> 
> Whenever I draw a plot containing Chinese character, it draws fine on
screen,
> but never saves to a file.
> It does not matter, whether I first draw it on screen and than save or draw
> straight to pdf.
> It is also all the same, whether the characters are in label or in the plot
> itself (via "pch=..." or text()).
> The Error is always: "conversion failure in 'mbcsToSbcs'
"
> 
> This is an example:
> 
> plot(1:20, 1:20, main="汉语 Derivational
Characters' Productivity")
> # it draws well, I attempt to 'Save As...' in GUI
> 
> Error in dev.copy(device = pdf, file =
"/Users/pavel/Desktop/hanyu.pdf",  :
> 	conversion failure in 'mbcsToSbcs'
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 
-- 
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