The defaults for postscript() paper = "default" onefile = TRUE horizontal = TRUE (it seems) date from the days when people used to used this to send plots directly to a postscript printer via print.it=TRUE. I haven't done that for years, and it seems that our current generation of students don't even know the concept. It seems 'horizontal = TRUE' is particularly difficult to grasp. Given that I suspect almost all uses of postscript() are to produce plots to be viewed on-screen or incorporated into another document, a more appropriate set of defaults would be width = 7, height = 7 paper = "special" onefile = FALSE horizontal = FALSE which would have the advantage of using the same default aspect ratio for plots as all (?) other R graphics devices. Does anyone see a reason not to change the defaults? -- 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 12/6/07, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:> The defaults for postscript() > > paper = "default" > onefile = TRUE > horizontal = TRUE > > (it seems) date from the days when people used to used this to send plots > directly to a postscript printer via print.it=TRUE. I haven't done that > for years, and it seems that our current generation of students don't even > know the concept. It seems 'horizontal = TRUE' is particularly difficult > to grasp. > > Given that I suspect almost all uses of postscript() are to produce plots > to be viewed on-screen or incorporated into another document, a more > appropriate set of defaults would be > > width = 7, height = 7 > paper = "special" > onefile = FALSE > horizontal = FALSE > > which would have the advantage of using the same default aspect ratio for > plots as all (?) other R graphics devices. > > Does anyone see a reason not to change the defaults?I'm not so sure about the 'onefile' change. Scripts with multiple plots run in batch mode will end up with multiple files; I prefer the current behaviour. I also have test scripts in packages that go postscript("something.ps") <many examples> dev.off() Unless I change all these to have onefile=TRUE, I'll end up only with the last plot available after the tests are run. -Deepayan
Hi Prof Brian Ripley wrote:> The defaults for postscript() > > paper = "default" > onefile = TRUE > horizontal = TRUE > > (it seems) date from the days when people used to used this to send plots > directly to a postscript printer via print.it=TRUE. I haven't done that > for years, and it seems that our current generation of students don't even > know the concept. It seems 'horizontal = TRUE' is particularly difficult > to grasp. > > Given that I suspect almost all uses of postscript() are to produce plots > to be viewed on-screen or incorporated into another document, a more > appropriate set of defaults would be > > width = 7, height = 7Wouldn't that be better as width = 6, height = 6 to match pdf() ? Paul> paper = "special" > onefile = FALSE > horizontal = FALSE > > which would have the advantage of using the same default aspect ratio for > plots as all (?) other R graphics devices. > > Does anyone see a reason not to change the defaults? >-- Dr Paul Murrell Department of Statistics The University of Auckland Private Bag 92019 Auckland New Zealand 64 9 3737599 x85392 paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/
I think you should change anything you want to change, on the assumption that most users are setting things by themselves, anyway. Now may be the time to change anything that you (and those kind enough to reply to your post) would like to see changed. For an example, I really like the ratio of font size to default plot size that I see in windows on my OSX machine, and would love it if pdf (which I use instead of postscript), produced similar geometry. I find pdf() produces a sort of "spaced out" appearance, with large fonts and lots of spacing, and that's great for giving lectures, but for papers I always set the page width to 10 inches or more, simply to get a higher ratio of data to labels. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Defaults-for-postscript%28%29-tp14188096p14366644.html Sent from the R devel mailing list archive at Nabble.com.