[Rd] Grapics Device Resolution Limits

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Dario Strbenac <dstr7320 at uni.sydney.edu.au>
>>>>>     on Fri, 10 Feb 2017 02:00:08 +0000 writes:

    > Good day,
    > Could the documentation of graphics devices give some explanation of how big the bitmap limits are? For example,

    >> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")

    > Results in Error: unable to start png() device, 

This is amazing to me.  I see

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")
> plot(1)
> dev.off()
null device 
          1 
> file.info("Figure1A.png")[1:5]
              size isdir mode               mtime               ctime
Figure1A.png 41272 FALSE  644 2017-02-10 17:40:42 2017-02-10 17:40:42
> 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

in three different versions of R I've tried (all were 64-bit Linux).
Note how *small* the file is.
Now, I've also tried a 32-bit version of Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) and get 
a similar result (not exactly the same number of bytes for the file size).


> but the help page of devices doesn't explain that there are any limits or how they are determined. The wording of the error message could also be improved, to explain that the resolution is too high or the dimensions are too large.

If one/some of those who can reproduce the problem in their
versions of R  provide (concise and not hard to read) patches to
the source of R, we'd probably gratefully accept them..

Martin Maechler

    >> sessionInfo()
    > R version 3.3.2 Patched (2017-02-07 r72138)
    > Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
    > Running under: Windows 7 (build 7601) Service Pack 1

    > --------------------------------------
    > Dario Strbenac
    > University of Sydney
    > Camperdown NSW 2050
    > Australia

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