R help - Mar 2002 - Need suggestions for nice handling of MANY plots

I have a collection of SAS code that helps people review large 
amounts of data on a regular basis. It does this by using SAS's proc 
gplot with a "by" statement to prepare as many as 400 (yes, 400) 
separate graphs. The code is run on a remote unix host, and displayed 
on the reviewer's local desktop using X11 and SAS's display manager. 
The process is initiated from a web browser.

The good side of using proc gplot is that after all 400 have been 
displayed once, the user can use the PageUp/PageDown keys or the 
scroll bar to move through the plots, choosing which ones to spend 
more time with, etc.. It's also reasonably fast. The graphs, all of 
them, are evidently stored somehow, so that they remain available 
until SAS is exited.

The question is, how close can I come to providing this kind of 
capability using R or Splus?

Displaying each graph once is not a problem, it's the going back and 
reviewing them part I need ideas for.

My current best idea is to shove them all into a pdf file, which can 
be displayed inline in the reviewer's browser, or possibly downloaded.

Thanks for any ideas
-Don

-- 
--------------------------------------
Don MacQueen
Environmental Protection Department
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA, USA
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I bet you could put something nice together with recordPlot() and
replayPlot() and readline(): essentially, construct a little looping shell
in R that reads input from the user, displaying the next plot (and
recording it) or moving back to a previous plot and replaying it, or
jumping to an arbitrary plot, or listing the available plots ... you can
keep the list of plots as a list of recordPlot() objects.



-- 
318 Carr Hall                                bolker at zoo.ufl.edu
Zoology Department, University of Florida    http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker
Box 118525                                   (ph)  352-392-5697
Gainesville, FL 32611-8525                   (fax) 352-392-3704


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> I have a collection of SAS code that helps people review large
> amounts of data on a regular basis. It does this by using SAS's proc
> gplot with a "by" statement to prepare as many as 400 (yes, 400)
> separate graphs. The code is run on a remote unix host, and displayed
> on the reviewer's local desktop using X11 and SAS's display
manager.
> The process is initiated from a web browser.
>
> The good side of using proc gplot is that after all 400 have been
> displayed once, the user can use the PageUp/PageDown keys or the
> scroll bar to move through the plots, choosing which ones to spend
> more time with, etc.. It's also reasonably fast. The graphs, all of
> them, are evidently stored somehow, so that they remain available
> until SAS is exited.
>
> The question is, how close can I come to providing this kind of
> capability using R or Splus?
>
> Displaying each graph once is not a problem, it's the going back and
> reviewing them part I need ideas for.
>
> My current best idea is to shove them all into a pdf file, which can
> be displayed inline in the reviewer's browser, or possibly downloaded.
>
> Thanks for any ideas
> -Don
>
Here is an example of what I would do on Windows.  First create PNG
files in one folder, like this for example:

library (maptree)
data (oregon.bird.dist)
data (oregon.bird.names)
data (oregon.grid)
data (oregon.border)

for (i in 1:20) {
  filename <- paste (row.names (oregon.bird.names)[i], ".png",
sep="")
  png (filename, width=400, height=380)
  group <- oregon.bird.dist[, i] + 1
  names (group) <- row.names (oregon.bird.dist)
  map.groups (oregon.grid, group, col=c("white", "dark
gray"))
  lines (oregon.border)
  mtext (oregon.bird.names[i, 2], side=3, line=0)
  graphics.off ()
}

Then use the freeware viewer XnView which will scroll through images
using the thumb wheel.

Denis White
   US EPA, 200 SW 35th St, Corvallis, Oregon, 97333 USA
   voice: 541.754.4476, email: white.denis at epa.gov
   web: www.epa.gov/wed/pages/staff/white/


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