[Rd] Sweave output encoding in R-2.10.0beta on Windows (Rgui <-> Rterm)

[Martin Becker]

Dear developers,

I have come across a (somewhat strange) change in the encoding of Sweave 
output from R-2.9.2pat to R-2.10.0beta (apparently specific to Rgui) on 
Windows installations. Of course, the NEWS file contains quite a few 
changes concerning encoding, but I was not able to locate an entry which 
explains the observed behaviour. I am not very familiar with 
encodings/locales/codepages, but I will try to explain my observations 
as best I can.

In R-2.9.2pat, when invoking R via Rgui --vanilla (output of 
seesionInfo() below), the output of Sweave for .rnw files containing 
german umlaute (latin1-encoded) is again latin1-encoded (the resulting 
.tex-file compiles with \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} and 
\usepackage[german]{babel}).
In R-2.10.0beta, however, when invoking R via Rgui --vanilla (output of 
seesionInfo() below), some of Sweave's output (more precisely, Soutput 
environments containing german umlaute, Sinput environments with german 
umlaute are still latin1) is utf-8 encoded (with some extra characters 
at the start and the end, which could be BOMs). Surprisingly, when R is 
invoked from (Windows) command line (R --vanilla or Rterm --vanilla), 
the encoding is completely latin1 again (as in R-2.9.2pat). So, the 
change to utf-8 encoding for parts of Sweave's output seems to be 
specific to Rgui.

Of course, I can work around this problem by using Rterm instead of Rgui 
when Sweav'ing, but I am not sure if the current behaviour of R via Rgui 
is as intended.
I will try to attach the .rnw - file as well as the resulting .tex - 
files (and hope, that the attachements pass through).

Best wishes,

   Martin



sessionInfo() for R-2.9.2pat (same for Rgui, R, Rterm):
R version 2.9.2 Patched (2009-09-24 r50041)
i386-pc-mingw32

locale:
LC_COLLATE=German_Germany.1252;LC_CTYPE=German_Germany.1252;LC_MONETARY=German_Germany.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=German_Germany.1252

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


sessionInfo() for R-2.10.0beta (same for Rgui, R, Rterm):
R version 2.10.0 beta (2009-10-11 r50037)
i386-pc-mingw32

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=German_Germany.1252  LC_CTYPE=German_Germany.1252  
[3] LC_MONETARY=German_Germany.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C                  
[5] LC_TIME=German_Germany.1252   

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


-- 
Dr. Martin Becker
Statistics and Econometrics
Saarland University
Campus C3 1, Room 206
66123 Saarbruecken
Germany

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