>>>>> Peter Dalgaard BSA <p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk>
adds:
PD> Jim Lindsey <jlindsey at alpha.luc.ac.be> writes:
>> I have been receiving complaints that my libraries no longer give
>> reasonable graphics with R0.90. I have been replying that I have
not
>> changed anything. Among my travels (presently in Umea), I have
>> finally had a chance to take a look. The best way to describe the
>> current default graphics is HORRIBLY UGLY. The R core member who
>> made those changes should buy glasses to see the screen better
>> instead of imposing his near sightedness on the rest of us. The
>> worst is that the most important options that have been modified
are
>> RO so we can do nothing. As PS graphics are also knackered, we
>> currently have no way of viewing a reasonable graph produced by R.
PD> Well, the font sizes are as I have had them for ages: 12pt on a
PD> 100dpi assumed resolution. If that's too large, fine, complain
and
PD> if you gain a sufficient following we might reduce it to 10pt. The
PD> old code would give you 100dpi or 75dpi fonts depending on which
PD> one came first on your font path and was available at the desired
PD> size, leading to general madness. If it bothers you enough, use
PD> fix(X11) and change the default for the pointsize argument.
After a quite a bit discussion (incl. some own thought), I tend to vote
with Jim Lindsey:
We *should* reduce the default font size: Because the font size is
relatively large, the margins (measured in characters via "mar")
become
large as well, and (as Jim pointed out to some of us)
now use more than 50% of the device surface.
Fontsize = 10 (pt) looks more reasonable, to me, too.
(However, I propose to make it an option, see below).
PD> The postscript is truly bug-ridden, but the latest snapshot should
PD> be much better.
>> Is there any way to set the default par options, say in Rprofile,
>> without having a graphics window pop up at startup?
PD> Nope, but we should probably have something like ps.options there,
PD> the par() effect is also messing up example(): the code cannot set
PD> ask=TRUE so multiple graphics in an example just fly by, unless the
PD> user sets the parameter.
yes, definitely a reasonable feature request! -- see below
BUT, for a first "quick fix" : Why not change X11's argument
pointsize = 12
to
pointsize = .Options$X11pointsize
(we already have X11colortype !).
Now back to the feature request:
Do we want par.defaults() for this?
It would have the same arguments as par() plus additional
device = .Options$device
with further possibility
device = "all"
i.e., by default, par.defaults() would set things only for the default
device, but there'd be a possibility to set these for all devices.
Note that
- This would lead to considerable side effects.
[Starting a device and setting par()s would not be portable,
for complete portability you'd have to first set (or reset) the
par.defaults()]
- for device = "postscript",
we could allow further arguments as those of ps.options() and postscript()
and e.g. for device = "X11" ( = default on non-gnome Unix),
one should allow arguments of X11/x11() such as pointsize, colortype, ...
-----
When feature requesting: What I have wanted more than once is an
par(reset = TRUE)
which would set all the par()s back to how they were when the device was
opened.
par.defaults(reset = TRUE)
would analogously remove all `site/user specific' par defaults
(effect: as if par.defaults() was never set).
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at
stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._