R help - Apr 2008 - Annoying bug in package cairoDevice

I sent this to R-Help and the listed maintainer of cairoDevice, I hope that
was the right thing to do.

For some reason, Cairo_png puts a box around a figure when you call
plot.new. It looks like box was called with black and a transparent
background. Example:
> library(cairoDevice)
> Cairo_png('cairo.png')
> plot.new()
> dev.off()
null device
          1

The boarder is narrow, so it's hard to see with a stand-alone image viewer.
If you paste the png onto a white background it's quite clear.

Admittedly, the default for par("bg") is transparent,
par("bty") is "o" and
par("col") is black. However, this behavior is not consistent with
other
devices (such as png in grDevices even if I set par(bg="white")).
Also,
Cairo_png draws the box even when par(bty="n").

I just tested this on Debian with version 2.6 of cairoDevice. I've also
observed this behavior on Windows and it's not a new problem.

The only workaround I've found is to call
> Cairo_png()
> par(col="white")
> setHook("plot.new", function() par(col="black"))
> plot(...)
As far as I'm concerned, this is a serious bug, it's a real problem when
creating figures for publication. I'd like confirmation that this is, in
fact, a bug as I haven't seen much documentation for standards for devices.
I suspect that it's a shallow bug, but I've never seen the code for
plot.new
nor do_Cairo so my suspicion may be more hope than insight.


Josh Gilbert

Statistical Researcher
Broad Institute
Chemical Biology Program

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Sorry about this. cairoDevice 2.8 (just uploaded to CRAN) should fix this
problem.

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:08 PM, Josh Gilbert <jgilbert.r@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I sent this to R-Help and the listed maintainer of cairoDevice, I hope
> that was the right thing to do.
>
> For some reason, Cairo_png puts a box around a figure when you call
> plot.new. It looks like box was called with black and a transparent
> background. Example:
> > library(cairoDevice)
> > Cairo_png('cairo.png')
> > plot.new()
> > dev.off()
> null device
>           1
>
> The boarder is narrow, so it's hard to see with a stand-alone image
> viewer. If you paste the png onto a white background it's quite clear.
>
> Admittedly, the default for par("bg") is transparent,
par("bty") is "o"
> and par("col") is black. However, this behavior is not consistent
with other
> devices (such as png in grDevices even if I set par(bg="white")).
Also,
> Cairo_png draws the box even when par(bty="n").
>
> I just tested this on Debian with version 2.6 of cairoDevice. I've also
> observed this behavior on Windows and it's not a new problem.
>
> The only workaround I've found is to call
> > Cairo_png()
> > par(col="white")
> > setHook("plot.new", function() par(col="black"))
> > plot(...)
>
> As far as I'm concerned, this is a serious bug, it's a real problem
when
> creating figures for publication. I'd like confirmation that this is,
in
> fact, a bug as I haven't seen much documentation for standards for
devices.
> I suspect that it's a shallow bug, but I've never seen the code for
plot.new
> nor do_Cairo so my suspicion may be more hope than insight.
>
>
> Josh Gilbert
>
> Statistical Researcher
> Broad Institute
> Chemical Biology Program
>
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]