[Rd] Undocumented 4.2.0 changes in grid text handling?

[Jan Netík]

Hello everyone,

I've been testing R 4.2.0 release candidates for some time and have spotted
a few changes that are not documented in
https://svn.r-project.org/R/branches/R-4-2-branch/src/library/grid/inst/doc/changes.txt,
general R NEWS, nor in this blogpost
https://developer.r-project.org/Blog/public/2021/12/14/updating-graphics-devices-for-r-4.2.0/index.html
.

In R 4.1.3, grid::gpar(fontface= "bold") results in a gpar "list" with
$fontface and (legacy?) $font entries, but in R 4.2.0, there is only $font.
In the manual, font is described only for backward compatibility.

I think there are more possibly subtle changes around text rendering
because bold fontface and inter-word spacing in the package {gridtext}
happened to stop working, see the issue at
https://github.com/wilkelab/gridtext/issues/24. Turns out it is pretty hard
to debug and to solve. Do you have some hints about other changes in grid
that could explain so different behaviour?

Many thanks and kind regards!
Jan

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