R-beta: Plot and scale

[Ross Ihaka]

> From: Bill Simpson <wsimpson at uwinnipeg.ca>
> Subject: Re: R-beta: Plot and scale

> I have this opinion from years of working on the Mac, where the WYSIWYG
> philosophy permeated everything.  The monitor and the printer were always
> coordinated so the physical dimensions of a figure on the monitor and the
> physical dimensions of the figure on the printer were identical.  (I
> am including fonts of course) This was achieved despite the huge diffs in
> monitor and laser printer resolution. I think this approach was also used
> on NeXT.  And it is a wonderful time-saver for people who do graphics.
> If you haven't experienced it, you don't know what you're missing.
>
> Right now the only way to make figs look the way you want in R (X11) is
> through trial and error (very time-consuming). (BTW using Mac R gives
> figures with the lovely monitor=printer characteristics I've been talking
> about, due to system software)
>
> I know this lack of output device coordination was a design decision
> (maybe not by S-Plus but at level of X-windows etc).  But it was a bad
> decision.

I think that what you want is important an I have tried to build the
R graphics system in a way which will at least partially support
what you want (fixed colors, linetypes etc).  There's just a bit more
to do ...

I might say that producing "WYSIWYG" output on the Mac was/is a nightmare.
The Mac graphics more really assumes that printers are do tmatrix with the
same dot pitch as the screen.

Display postscript really provides the best kind of solution.  Roll on
GNUStep ...

	Ross
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