[Rd] Defaults for postscript()

[Deepayan Sarkar]

On 12/6/07, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> The defaults for postscript()
>
> paper = "default"
> onefile = TRUE
> horizontal = TRUE
>
> (it seems) date from the days when people used to used this to send plots
> directly to a postscript printer via print.it=TRUE.  I haven't done that
> for years, and it seems that our current generation of students don't even
> know the concept.  It seems 'horizontal = TRUE' is particularly difficult
> to grasp.
>
> Given that I suspect almost all uses of postscript() are to produce plots
> to be viewed on-screen or incorporated into another document, a more
> appropriate set of defaults would be
>
> width = 7, height = 7
> paper = "special"
> onefile = FALSE
> horizontal = FALSE
>
> which would have the advantage of using the same default aspect ratio for
> plots as all (?) other R graphics devices.
>
> Does anyone see a reason not to change the defaults?

I'm not so sure about the 'onefile' change. Scripts with multiple
plots run in batch mode will end up with multiple files; I prefer the
current behaviour. I also have test scripts in packages that go


postscript("something.ps")
<many examples>
dev.off()


Unless I change all these to have onefile=TRUE, I'll end up only with
the last plot available after the tests are run.

-Deepayan