[Rd] ugly plots with xlim/ylim exceeding data range (changed since R2.6.1)

[Sklyar, Oleg (London)]

The behaviour of the plot function when used with xlim/ylim and the
matplot function as in the following simple example changed between
R2.6.1 and 2.7.0+ producing ugly plots in the new versions. In case of
plot it looks like the pretty function is called with wrong arguments
(i.e. range of supplied data rather than values of xlim and ylim):

m = matrix(c(-0.033, 0.009, 0.064, 0.050, 0.097,
    -0.008, 0.037, 0.070, 0.060, 0.077,
    -0.027, 0.051, 0.060, 0.106, 0.049,
    -0.068, -0.009, 0.095, 0.091, 0.125,
    -0.065, 0.013, 0.062, 0.111, 0.080), ncol=5, byrow=TRUE)

pdf(sprintf("R2.%s_SVN_%s.pdf", version$minor, version$"svn rev"))
plot(c(-5,5),c(0,10),xlim=c(-10,10),ylim=c(-5,15))
matplot(m)
dev.off()

I attached three PDFs with the outputs from R2.6.1 (43537) (which I
consider to be correct), R2.7.2 patched (46442) and R2.8.0 (46234). Just
in case PDFs are removed by the mail server here is the description of
the problem: the one from R2.6.1 plots the axes correctly putting ticks
along the whole axis range even if the data fits just the part of the
range; the ones from 2.7.2 and 2.8.0 put ticks just for the part of the
axis range. In case of plot they cover the range of the data, but with
the requested xlim and ylim they should cover the range of those, and in
case of matplot the range of ticks does not cover the range of data at
all.

Here are the seesionInfo's:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
R version 2.8.0 Under development (unstable) (2008-08-05 r46234) 
x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu 

locale:
C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

-----------------------------------------------------------------
R version 2.7.2 Patched (2008-08-26 r46442) 
x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu 

locale:
C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
R version 2.6.1 (2007-11-26) 
x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu 

locale:
C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base


loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] rcompgen_0.1-17


Dr Oleg Sklyar
Technology Group
Man Investments Ltd
+44 (0)20 7144 3803
osklyar at maninvestments.com


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