[Rd] barplot() behavior changes under 1.9.1 Alpha

[Marc Schwartz]

Greetings all,

It would appear that some default behavior changes for barplot() have
been introduced into Version 1.9.1 alpha (2004-05-30).

One change is in the specification of the default 'col' argument, which
is now:

col: a vector of colors for the bars or bar components. By default, grey
is used if height is a vector, and heat.colors(nrow(height)) if height
is a matrix.


'col' now defaults to NULL, whereas up through 1.9.0-patched it
defaulted to 'col = heat.colors(NR)'.

I just completed the installation/upgrade of FC2 this weekend and
thought initially there was a problem with FC2, until I
compiled/re-installed a copy of '1.9.0-patched' and noted the old
behavior.

Can this change be noted in the NEWS file?  I did not see it noted
there, which contributed to my confusion until I reviewed the code and
help file.

Also, it would appear that the initial change in 1.9.0's barplot(),
which caused some problems for folks relative to using the output of
table() as the input for the 'height' argument, has been restored to the
1.8.1 behavior. The 1.9.0 change from 1.8.1 was reported in r-bugs
#6776.

It would appear from a code review that the initial checks of the
'height' argument in barplot() have been restructured in 1.9.1-alpha,
restoring the 1.8.1 style behavior.

Can this change also be documented in the NEWS file?

Thanks,

Marc Schwartz