[R] R-graphics: insert PS in MS Word

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, David Middleton wrote:

[DM quoting from an unattributed source]

> >Then the file can be transferred to the Windows computer, and after 
> >adding bounding boxes and a preview with Ghostview (the "PS to EPS" 
> >and "Add EPS Preview" commands are well documented in the online 
> >help) the file should be ready for inserting in MS-Word.

Let's try to stamp this usage out. Ghostview has no such operations. The
program under discussion is called GSView: it is a different program by a
different author (Russell Lang) which runs on Windows, and he deserves his
credit.  It seems that a high proportion of GSView users don't read the
title line, for example.

> The Ghostview documentation also makes the point that the "initclip"
> operator should not be used in EPS files, or files you convert to EPS
> using the "PS to EPS" command.  It's worth noting that the postscript
> produced by R _does_ use the initclip operator, despite the fact that
> the postscript() help page suggests R postscript is EPS compatible.
> (I'm currently on R 0.64.1 win32).

It _may_ use it, but the Adobe documentation of EPS says it should not
contain the initclip operator. There are many more restrictions, for
example only having one page of output. (A quick check on my examples
showed no instances of the cl operator (defined in terms of initclip)
actually being used.)

> That said, I've had very few problems using the postscript produced by
> R in either MS word or latex documents.  R postscript does include
> a bounding box, so it is often unnecessary to run it through ghostview,
> especially if you don't need a preview image added.

> As I recall the one.page=T argument to the Splus postscript device caused
> fully compliant EPS to be produced, which could potentially be a useful
> feature
> for R.

(onefile=T) That is S-PLUS on Unix, not Windows, unfortunately.

David: could you please send a succinct bug report to R-bugs, so this (it
is not EPS-compliant, needs a one.page argument) gets logged and on the
TODO list.

Brian

-- 
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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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