R devel - Jul 2015 - Support for transparency in metafile export & support for export to Powerpoint

Dear all,
Further to my previous message I now made a one-line convencience function to
export your currently active graphics window/plot to either Word or Powerpoint
in Office-native vector-based DrawingML format using either
export2ppt(file="plot.pptx")
or
export2doc(file="plot.docx") :
see
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31212659/r-function-to-capture-r-plot-in-current-graphics-device-and-export-it-to-powerp/31221813#31221813
(analogous in syntax to function dev.copy2pdf in grDevices)

The code of the function is:

export2office = function(file = "plot", type="PPT", scaling
= 90, aspectr=NULL, vector.graphic = TRUE, fontname = "Arial",
pointsize=20) {
  file=sub("^(.*)[.].*", "\\1", file)
  if (type=="PPT"|type=="PPTX")
{ext=".pptx";type="PPT"} else
{ext=".docx";type="DOC"}
  require(ReporteRs)
  captureplot = function() {p = invisible(recordPlot())
                          dev.copy()
                          return(p)}
  p = captureplot()
  plotsize = dev.size()
  plotaspectr = plotsize[[1]]/plotsize[[2]]
  if (!is.null(aspectr)) plotaspectr=aspectr
  myplot=function(pl=p) print(pl)
  if (type=="PPT") {doc = pptx();doc = addSlide(doc, slide.layout =
"Blank");pagesize = dim(doc)$slide.dim} else {doc = docx();pagesize =
dim(doc)$page-dim(doc)$margins[c(4,3)]}
  pageaspectr = pagesize["width"]/pagesize["height"]
  if (pageaspectr>plotaspectr) {xf=plotaspectr/pageaspectr;yf=1} else
{xf=1;yf=pageaspectr/plotaspectr}
  w = (scaling/100)*pagesize["width"]*xf;
  h = (scaling/100)*pagesize["height"]*yf
  if (type=="PPT") {doc = addPlot( doc, myplot, vector.graphic =
vector.graphic, fontname = fontname, pointsize = pointsize,
                 offx = (pagesize["width"]-w)/2, offy =
(pagesize["height"]-h)/2,
                 width = w, height = h) } else {doc = addPlot( doc, myplot,
vector.graphic = vector.graphic, fontname = fontname, pointsize = pointsize,
                                                               width = w, height
= h)}
  writeDoc( doc, paste0(file,ext) )
}

export2ppt = function(type="PPT", ...) export2office(type=type,...)
export2doc = function(type="DOC", ...) export2office(type=type,...)

# Examples:

require(ggplot2)
qplot(Sepal.Length, Petal.Length, data = iris, color = Species, size =
Petal.Width, alpha = I(0.7))
export2ppt(file="plot.pptx")
export2ppt(file="plot.pptx",aspectr=1.7,fontname="Times New
Roman")

heatmap(as.matrix(eurodist))
export2ppt(file="heatmap.pptx")


In Powerpoint you can then right click on the graph and Ungroup it, thereby
allowing you to make minor changes to the layout if need be, before saving it as
PDF from PPT. The quality is much better than what you get if you try to do the
editing in the PDF version using Inkscape. It works with ggplot2 and lattice
plots as well as base R plots and also fully supports transparency (unlike e.g.
EPS or EMF export in R - EMF in the meantime I found out does not support
transparency at all, and can only deal with it by rasterizing all
semi-tranparent graphics elements).

Given the widespread use of Office/LibreOffice/OpenOffice I think it would be
very handy if this kind of functionality were provided as part of base R at one
stage or another (as would Excel import and export, for that matter). So if
anyone on this list thinks it would be a good idea to incorporate this function
in grDevices or something, please do! (would be handy e.g. if powerpoint export
also showed in the File...Save as... interactive graphics devices, like
windows() )

Otherwise I'll be in touch with the ReporteRs author to try to convince him
to add it there.

cheers,
Tom


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