[Rd] One possible cause for incorrect symbols in X11() output

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, peter dalgaard wrote:

>
> On Aug 19, 2010, at 9:15 AM, Jari Oksanen wrote:
>
>
>>
>> The X11(type = 'cairo') shows the problem with example(points);
>> TestChars(font=5). However, there is no problem with the default device
>> (quartz), nor with the default X11() which has type = 'Xlib' (unlike
>> documented in ?X11: 'cairo' is available but 'Xlib' still used).
>>
>> What ever this is worth of (if this is worthless, I'll surely hear about
>> it).
>
> Well, maybe not worthless, but the X11 setup on Mac is poor in 
> general. type="Xlib" appears plainly not to work, and even 
> disregarding the pi issue, the rotated y-axis labels come out pretty 
> ugly. This is why quartz is now the default on OSX.

The even more serious issue under cairo of confusing style and weight 
is discussed on ?X11.

> BTW, it seems that the standard X11 "Symbol","Regular" font is 
> simply absent on OSX. I can't get fc-match to list it, anyway.

R's X11(type='cairo') device is using a version of cairographics 
compiled by Simon which includes a static build of fontconfig.  So it 
is not really 'OSX'!  I'm guessing you are using 
/usr/local/bin/fc-match which AFAIK also Simon's.

It is also not using pango, and so not selecting fonts the same way as 
on Linux.

>
> -- 
> Peter Dalgaard
> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> Phone: (+45)38153501
> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>
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-- 
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)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595