R had an internal Plot format which could be saved in files and then
reused.  Just like one can save data.frames or lists of data which I
routinely do could save plot which could be used for further elaboration
and analysis.  Thus you could modify a plot after you saved it.  Matlab has
a fig format which it uses for that purpose.  The current version of R
version 3 allows plots only to be used within a particular session.  You
can save it with recorded plot but you cannot reuse the old plot.  I
typically do 400 or 500 plots a session
including diagnostic plots for the package rugarch which I routinely saved
and reused.   I had to modify my code to regenerate my plots on demand.  If
the internal format of a plot is so unstable that replaying i.e. displaying
it damages R then the format needs to be entirely fixed.  This is
independent of the graphical devise used to display the plot.  In fact the
internal structure should be graphics devise independt and display on unix
or windows or whatever OS it is created on.  Either the internal format
which should be redesigned, or the error message needs to be taken out of
the format.  This internal format if done right has two uses.  First it
produces plot which are modifyable unlike say svg() or pdf().  Second it
should save space and be suitable for eloading into R.  Regenerating these
from data
each time is an unnecessary waste of time as far as I can tell.  Its hard
to see why the developers did this.
                  ---mike

-- 
Michael Cohen
Work: 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Actuarial Sciences, Boston Mass
Home: 25 Stearns Road #3 Brookline, MA
 Ph:  1-857-389-3432(c) 1-617-758-5509(w) 617-734-8828(h) Fax: 617-353-7755

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