[R] Autogenerated png, bitmap images

[Pikounis, Bill]

Tony,

> that all the fonts on my graphs get messed up.  Anybody have 
> any nija R
> commands to make all fonts look great?  Anybody have any idea 
> how to fix
> this?  So far, no luck on Solaris or Linux making the Xvfb fonts look

I have played with Xvfb and have not seen the same font problem (Mandrake
9.0 for Linux, R 1.6.2) generating png's via CGI (my problems are more with
CGI-secure permissions).  You mentioned running a cron (batch) job -- do you
see the same problem using R interactively (such as an ssh login with X not
running)?  Perhaps you can provide some lines of your code of your cron
script to help the diagnosis?  What is specifically messed up with the
fonts?

Adjusting the pointsize argument in png might help.

> is that the bitmap files are enormous compared to the png images.  Any
> idea how I could make the bmp images smaller (and create 
> faster?) (One of
> my R bmp generation files is attached.)

As far as bitmaps go, I think that in general the smaller they are, the less
resolution you will have. But even if you are willing to give that up, you
might need to delve into ghostscript call options, since my understanding is
that what bitmap() uses under Linux (and I presume other X11 device
approaches including Solaris).  See the code for bitmap(), in particular the
gsexe and cmd objects. (I noticed your setting of some arguments like res in
your bitmap generation file attachment, but as I guess above, other
gs-intrinsic flags may be needed.)

Hope that helps,
Bill

----------------------------------------
Bill Pikounis, Ph.D.

Biometrics Research Department
Merck Research Laboratories
PO Box 2000, MailDrop RY84-16  
126 E. Lincoln Avenue
Rahway, New Jersey 07065-0900
USA

v_bill_pikounis at merck.com

Phone: 732 594 3913
Fax: 732 594 1565


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Vargas [mailto:tvargas at cisco.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 9:23 PM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: [R] Autogenerated png, bitmap images
> 
> 
> I have two questions -
> 
> 1.  I am trying to create R png graphs via cron.  I have this 
> part working
> using Xvfb (X virtual frame buffer).  One problem that I 
> have, though, is
> that all the fonts on my graphs get messed up.  Anybody have 
> any nija R
> commands to make all fonts look great?  Anybody have any idea 
> how to fix
> this?  So far, no luck on Solaris or Linux making the Xvfb fonts look
> good.
> 
> I was thining of sending an e-mail to the Xfree86 org people. 
>  Haven't seen anything helpful on google so far.
> 
> 
> 2.  I really like the png solution that I have working, 
> above, except for
> the fonts.  Assumming that I can't get the virtual frame 
> buffer working,
> I guess I can switch to bitmap devices.  One thing I have 
> noticed, though,
> is that the bitmap files are enormous compared to the png images.  Any
> idea how I could make the bmp images smaller (and create 
> faster?) (One of
> my R bmp generation files is attached.)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tony
> 
> Tony Vargas
> Cisco Systems
> Engineering Computing Services
> (408) 525-4113
> tvargas at cisco.com
> 


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