[Rd] Thanks (More plotting comments)

Telford Tendys telford@progsoc.uts.edu.au
Tue, 15 Feb 2000 13:04:04 +1100


> try ...
>     expression(90*degree)
> 
> also, for angles, there are ...
>     expression(60*minute)
>     expression(30*second)

That's exactly what I was looking for!

> If your postscript viewer performs antialiasing, small features like
> these will smear; try it with antialiasing turned off and see if it
> looks more like what you expect.

Exactly right, I'm using `gs' and turning off antialiasing fixes it.
I'm surprised at how different the line looks with antialiasing on and off,
I didn't realise the filter was quite so intense.

> In the technical sense of S graphics you want to include figure regions
> not plot regions in other publications.  (In years of doing this
> and scores of publications I have only once moved the axis labels.)

I guess there is something I'm not understanding here. If I draw a diagram
in xfig and export to eps then it exports exactly that diagram, trimmed
right to the edges of whatever lines are in that picture. Then I import
it into Latex which takes the bounding box and presumes everything in that
box is picture. Latex then adds a little space before and after the picture,
and centres the picture in the column of text. I add the caption under the
figure at the Latex stage rather than have it built into the figure because
that provides automatic figure numbering, font consistency, indexing,
references in the text, etc.

So from R, I expected to get a plot (as an eps file) which is trimmed right
back to the edges of the plot, then I can drop it into Latex exactly the
same as my xfig diagrams, put a caption on them the same way and get the
same spacing as other figures in the report. In addition, giving Latex
responsibility for the margins means that you get the rubbery glue that
juggles items to fit the page evenly.

I can perfectly understand that there are situations where users won't
want to use Latex, they might want to print a whole page of plots without
wanting to include it in a document or they might want to include it in
a different document processor (maybe something WYSIWYG where margins in
the plot are helpful). Formatting styles change in different disciplines,
for whatever reason Engineers tend to pack things in tightly. Anyhow,
I'm just providing some feedback from my own perspective.

	- Tel
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