[Rd] identify() and metafile copies under Windows XP (PR#9634)

[ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]

This seems not specific to metafiles, nor even to Windows (but the use of 
Esc is specific to Rgui).  As I understand it you expected the results of 
a graphics operation you interrupted to be copied.

I don't see anything on the help page explaining what happens if you 
interrupt during identify(), so in the words of the POSIX standards I 
would expect this to be 'undefined'.  The help page does explain how to 
terminate an identify() call, and what puzzles me is why you did not do as 
it suggests.

What a 'copy' means depends on the 'from' and 'to' devices, and how you 
copy.  It seems reasonable that saving a bitmap might be different from 
copying the plot to a device at a different resolution.


On Wed, 25 Apr 2007, jgvcqa at rit.edu wrote:

> I am running R version as follows under Windows XP.
>
>
> platform       i386-pc-mingw32
> arch           i386
> os             mingw32
> system         i386, mingw32
> status
> major          2
> minor          5.0
> year           2007
> month          04
> day            23
> svn rev        41293
> language       R
> version.string R version 2.5.0 (2007-04-23)
>
>
> Consider the following R commands and comments
>
> x<-1:10
> plot(x)
> identify(x,n=1)
> # I click under the 4th data point (and "4" appears on the graph). I
> save as a Metafile and paste into Word. The original plot and "4" are
> copied. This is good.
>
> identify(x)
> # I click under the 5th data point (and "5" also now appears on the
> graph) and then use the Esc key to stop the processing. I save as a
> Metafile and paste into Word. The original plot and "4" are copied, but
> "5" is not copied. This is not good.

But as no point was returned to the console, why did you think it has been 
successfully marked?

> identify(x,n=1)
> # I click under the 6th data point. I save as a Metafile and paste into
> Word. The original plot and "4" and "6" are copied, but "5" is not
> copied
>
>
> If I save as a bitmap the "5" is also copied.
>
> The same problem occurred in 2.4.0.
>
> Regards,
>
> Joseph G. Voelkel, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor and Chair, Graduate Statistics Program
> Center for Quality and Applied Statistics
> Kate Gleason College of Engineering
> Rochester Institute of Technology
> V 585-475-2231
> F 585-475-5959
> joseph.voelkel at rit.edu
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

-- 
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 272866 (PA)
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