R help - Sep 2004 - How to improve the quality of curve/line plots?

Dear list,

I'm using the windows version of R. When plotting a curve or a line for time
series with annual data , e. g. GDP growth 1991-2003, the line seems to exist of
a lot of smaller lines. Printing the results the curves and lines seems to be
"unclean" (because of using small resolution bitmaps?). Comparing the
result of R with the same results of Excel the lines in excel seems to havve a
higher qualitiy. In Excel you also can produce curves instead of lines.

Are there any possibilities how to improve the quality of the plots in R? How
can R be influenced to plot "clean" lines with a higher resolution on
the screen (I think it's not a question of the pdf- or png command.).
Perhaps, it's a problem of the graphical possibilites of R because the most
line plots which can be seen on the web have these problems.

Thanks,

Dr. Michael Wolf
Bezirksregierung M??nster
Dezernat 61
Domplatz 1-3    48161 M??nster
Tel.:   ++ 49 (02 51) / 4 11 - 17 95
Fax.:   ++ 49 (02 51) / 4 11 - 8 17 95
E-Mail: michael.wolf at bezreg-muenster.nrw.de

Wolf, Michael wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> I'm using the windows version of R. When plotting a curve or a line for
time series with annual data , e. g. GDP growth 1991-2003, the line seems to
exist of a lot of smaller lines. Printing the results the curves and lines seems
to be "unclean" (because of using small resolution bitmaps?).
Comparing the result of R with the same results of Excel the lines in excel
seems to havve a higher qualitiy. In Excel you also can produce curves instead
of lines.
> 
> Are there any possibilities how to improve the quality of the plots in R?
How can R be influenced to plot "clean" lines with a higher resolution
on the screen (I think it's not a question of the pdf- or png command.).
Perhaps, it's a problem of the graphical possibilites of R because the most
line plots which can be seen on the web have these problems.
Can you specify an example please? I cannot remember any "unclean"
plot.
In particular, no bitmaps are used to render graphics in R.

What I guess is that you have a line plot and each observation is 
connected with the subsequent one by a line. If you want to smooth it 
(and you think smoothing is appropriate here), you have to apply a 
smoothing technique before plotting.

Uwe Ligges

> Thanks,
> 
> Dr. Michael Wolf
> Bezirksregierung M??nster
> Dezernat 61
> Domplatz 1-3    48161 M??nster
> Tel.:   ++ 49 (02 51) / 4 11 - 17 95
> Fax.:   ++ 49 (02 51) / 4 11 - 8 17 95
> E-Mail: michael.wolf at bezreg-muenster.nrw.de
> 
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