R help - Aug 2011 - How to calculate the number of time a given string can be displayed in the width of a grid viewport

Dear R users,

I am trying to determine how many characters can be displayed within the
width of an open grid viewport. Unfortunately, the arithmetic operation that
seems obvious in this case is be permitted with unit objects (see example
below). Although it isa brut force way to get this number (using a while
loop where the string would be modified by appending the original string to
itseft until its width is bigger than the width of the viewport), this
solution seems a bit overworked. Any suggestion would be welcome.

Sebastien

require(grid)
dev.off()
dev.new()
nstr <- ''
str <- 'OXXXX'

nInWidth <- floor(unit(1,'npc')/unit(1,'strwidth',str))  #
Does not work

nInWidth <- 0

convertWidth(unit(1,'strwidth',nstr),'npc')

while
(unclass(convertWidth(unit(1,'strwidth',paste(nstr,str,sep='')),'npc'))[1]
-
1 <=.Machine$double.eps){
  nInWidth <- nInWidth +1
  nstr <- paste(nstr,str,sep='')
}

nInWidth

grid.text(paste(rep(str,nInWidth),collapse=''),
          x = unit(0.5, "npc"), y = unit(0.5, "npc"),
          draw = TRUE)

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