I sent this privately to ivo welch yesterday, and he thinks it might
be useful to someone else as well. Since I'm on a Mac the screen
device is quartz():
> quartz()
> plot( c(0,1), c(0,1) );
> text( 0.5, 0.5, "\u2113" )
# and then File/Save As/
--
David.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>
> Date: August 17, 2010 3:44:34 PM EDT
> To: ivo welch <ivo.welch at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [R] \ell symbol (log-likelihood)
>
>
> On Aug 17, 2010, at 1:08 PM, ivo welch wrote:
>
>> yes, I got the same thing.
>>
>
> When I plot to the Mac default screen device (which only does "Save
> as.." to pdf files) I get the desired glyph. Saving it produces the
> desired file. If you need to save files programatically, there might
> be work-arounds using the screen device as an intermediate.
>
> You could also look up this obscure reference:
> http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/Rhelp10/2009-August/209605.html
>
> The author (me) says that he found out that UTF-8 is not an
> acceptable encoding and that others are needed for ps devices (and
> perhaps this applies to pdf as well, but he is unsure) and can be
> found in your grDevices folder. I wish I could tell you which
> combination of encoding with which font can get you what you want
> but that is beyond my ken.
>
> --
> David.
>
>
>> best,
>>
>> /iaw
>> ----
>> Ivo Welch (ivo.welch at brown.edu, ivo.welch at gmail.com)
>> CV Starr Professor of Economics (Finance), Brown University
>> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 12:50 PM, David Winsemius
>> <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Aug 17, 2010, at 8:41 AM, ivo welch wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear R experts---is it possible to plot the \ell symbol in R
>>>> under the
>>>> pdf device? the following did not work:
>>>>
>>>> pdf(file="ell.pdf");
>>>> plot( c(0,1), c(0,1) );
>>>> text( 0.5, 0.5, "\u2113" )
>>>> dev.off()
>>>>
>>>> my guess is that this cannot be done, but I thought I would
ask.
>>>
>>> (On a Mac:)
>>>
>>> After 7 warning messages I got an ellipsis ("...")
printed at the
>>> desired
>>> location. Interestingly I think the error message might have
>>> properly
>>> printed the desired glyph (assuming you wanted a cursive lower
>>> case "l":
>>>
>>> Warning messages:
>>> 1: In text.default(0.5, 0.5, "?") :
>>> conversion failure on '?' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot
substituted for
>>> <e2>
>>>
>>> I also looked in the Hershey fonts without recognition (but could
>>> have
>>> missed one). One the Mac there is an option among the Zapfino
>>> family but I
>>> suspect that is of little use to you.
>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> David Winsemius, MD
>>> West Hartford, CT
>>>
>>>
>
> David Winsemius, MD
> West Hartford, CT
>
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT