[Rd] Unpredictable EPS->PDF rotation (PR#4460)

[ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]

On 8 Oct 2003, Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:

> arnima at u.washington.edu writes:
>
> > Dear r-bugs,
> >
> > When I create EPS files, they sometimes appear rotated in my LaTeX PDF
> > document and sometimes they don't. Two examples:
> >
> > ## x1.eps is not rotated in LaTeX
> > x <- seq(-1, 1, length=100)
> > postscript("c:/x1.eps", height=3, width=4,
> >            horizontal=FALSE, onefile=FALSE, paper="special")
> > plot(x, dnorm(x), type="l")
> > dev.off()
> >
> > ## x2.eps is not rotated in LaTeX
> > x <- seq(-2, 2, length=100)
> > postscript("c:/x2.eps", height=3, width=4,
> >            horizontal=FALSE, onefile=FALSE, paper="special")
> > plot(x, dnorm(x), type="l")
> > dev.off()
> >
> > By LaTeX PDF, I am referring to the dvips->ghostscript pathway, but x2.eps
> > also rotates when distilled into PDF outside LaTeX. I have tried
> > ghostscript and acrobat, placed on a page or cropped, so the problem does
> > not seem to be confounded with particular PDF distillation software.
> >
> > I'm aware of the pdf() device in R, but EPS files are a widely used format
> > to share scientific graphics, often winding up embedded in a PDF document
> > at a later point in the hands of an editor.
> >
> > If at all possible, a more predictable postscript generator would be
> > appreciated, where EPS figures would not rotate when embedded in PDF
> > documents.

I think this is nothing to do with R, which generates predictable
postscript for me.

> I can reproduce the effect on RedHat 8, but I'm at a loss as to

Perhaps you could tells us what the effect is (the original message says
neither is rotated!) and how exactly to reproduce it?

I found that x1.eps is not rotated by Distiller, but x2.eps is.  That's not
a bug but intentional: Distiller (on its default settings) does auto-rotate
individual pages of eps files.  My guess is that gs is doing something
similar on your setup -- it rotates for me under gs8.00 unless I set
AutoRotate to /None (I used Convert in GSView to do so).

> explain it. The headers and bounding boxes of the two .eps files are
> identical and to the best of my eyesight they are also using the same
> coordinate system.
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595