R help - Mar 2004 - dev.print and X11(canvas = "black")

In Splus, I often use graphics windows with a black background and white
foreground.  The S print.graph() function sends the current plot to my
printer but with a white background and black foreground.  I'd like to
be able to do something similar in R, but can't figure out how.  I've
tried various permutations of dev.copy() and dev.print(), but it seems
that the foreground color is fixed when the original plot is drawn, and
dev.copy always redraws it with that color.  So even though I can get my
postscript output with a white background, things that were drawn white on the
dark background of my X11 device are still drawn white when dev.copy'd
to a postscript device.  Since the postscript has a white background,
that means the white foreground stuff doesn't show up.

Is there a way to handle this?  Or do I just have to give up on ever
using a dark canvas in X11() if I ever want to print the result?

Please reply directly.

Jeff

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 jhallman at frb.gov wrote:
> In Splus, I often use graphics windows with a black background and white
> foreground.  The S print.graph() function sends the current plot to my
> printer but with a white background and black foreground.  I'd like to
S (and S-PLUS) only has a few colour numbers, and you can change their 
interpretation on the screen graphics devices after plotting.  R does plot 
in colours rather than numbers.
> be able to do something similar in R, but can't figure out how. 
I've
> tried various permutations of dev.copy() and dev.print(), but it seems
> that the foreground color is fixed when the original plot is drawn, and
> dev.copy always redraws it with that color.  So even though I can get my
> postscript output with a white background, things that were drawn white on
the
> dark background of my X11 device are still drawn white when dev.copy'd
> to a postscript device.  Since the postscript has a white background,
> that means the white foreground stuff doesn't show up.
> 
> Is there a way to handle this?  Or do I just have to give up on ever
> using a dark canvas in X11() if I ever want to print the result?
There are many ways to print the result, and re-running the plot commands 
after switching to a postscript() device is one of the best.  This would 
work for you if you only ever use colour numbers and switch the palette
(and par("fg")).
> Please reply directly.
> 
> Jeff
-- 
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)
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