Hi, I'm raising the issue, again, of those pesky thin lines that show up with a pdf graphics device, otherwise known as FAQ 7.36. I have read the FAQ and understand that I can eliminate them by adjusting the anti-aliasing option for viewing them on the screen, but this doesn't necessarily eliminate them for a print device or for transferring them into a powerpoint or similar type of presentation format. I have noticed that pdf's generated by some other software do not have the problem that the R generated ones do. For example, I can generate a pdf figure in R and with Asymptote (http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/) and put them in the same LaTeX document and the Asymptote generated pdf shows no thin lines independently of the anti-alias setting while the R generated one does. So it is not just the viewer that is at issue as some pdf generators can make an image that is resistant to this problem. After some experimentation, I found that I could fix the problem in a pdf file generated in R using the pdf graphics device by running the file through a filter. Here is a short R example that produces the lines if your anti-aliasing setting is set (in)appropriately: pdf("TestBand.pdf") n <- 16 x <- y <- seq(1, n) z <- matrix(1, n, n) z[, 7:10] <- 0.5 z[, c(5, 12)] <- 0 cc <- seq(0, 1, len = 256) image(z, col = grey(cc), axes = FALSE) dev.off() and afterwards I corrected the file with the following awk filter #FixLines.awk { if ($NF == "rg") { print $0 for (i = 1; i < NF; i++) printf "%6.3f ", $i print " RG" } else {if ($NF == "f") { for (i = 1; i < (NF - 1); i++) printf "%6.3f ", $i print "re b" } else print $0 } } and then this from a terminal command line: awk -f FixLines.awk < TestBand.pdf > FT.pdf alternatively, the following Python script works just as well: import sys InFile = open(sys.argv[1], mode = "r") for line in InFile: if(line.rfind("rg") != -1): print line, print line.replace("rg", "RG"), elif(line.rfind("re f") != -1): print line.replace("re f", "re b"), else: print line, InFile.close() What I found was that the pdf's generated from R contain commands that are filling but not stroking rectangles that would correspond to the elements of the matrix visualized with the image function. So with the filter, I located the lines that set the fill color and added another line that set the stroke color to be the same, then changed the rectangle fill commands, "re f", to fill and stroke commands, "re b". I think that this could be patched in devPS.c (untested) by something like devPS.c6945 if(R_VIS(gc->fill)) { PDF_SetFill(gc->fill, dd); PDF_SetLineColor(gc->fill, dd); fprintf(pd->pdffp, "0 0 %.2f %.2f re b\n", 72.0 * pd->width, 72.0 * pd->height); } or if the current behavior is desired under certain circumstances, perhaps an argument, StrokeandFill, could be added to the pdf device (postscript, too, I suppose) so that this behavior could be selected? Perhaps, there are some more fundamental issues here that I'm not aware of. i'd like to hear about them, if so. Thank you. Ken -- Ken Knoblauch Inserm U846 Stem-cell and Brain Research Institute Department of Integrative Neurosciences 18 avenue du Doyen L?pine 69500 Bron France tel: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 77 fax: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 61 portable: +33 (0)6 84 10 64 10 http://www.sbri.fr/members/kenneth-knoblauch.html -- Ken Knoblauch Inserm U846 Stem-cell and Brain Research Institute Department of Integrative Neurosciences 18 avenue du Doyen L?pine 69500 Bron France tel: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 77 fax: +33 (0)4 72 91 34 61 portable: +33 (0)6 84 10 64 10 http://www.sbri.fr/members/kenneth-knoblauch.html