[R] Re: win.metafiles in linux and R

[Pikounis, Bill]

Dear all:

Professor Ripley commented:
> Note that libEMF's help page says
> 
>   It is also possible now to generate EMF files from PSTOEDIT 
> on POSIX 
>   systems. Therefore, if your graphics code only outputs 
> PostScript, you 
>   can now easily convert it to EMF.
> 
> but that is only true on Windows (unfortunately).
> 

Actually I have had some luck combining libEMF and pstoedit *on Linux* as
well; i.e., generate a postscript file thru R on Linux, and them apply
pstoedit to convert it to EMF (on Linux).  It is not perfect though, to be
sure; for instance I had to apply a rotation argument so that when I
transferred the resultant EMF file to Windows and then imported it into Word
it would be right-side up. Plus, I only tried some basic examples, like
plot(1:10) and a couple of snippets from example(xyplot). 

So yes, in theory a win.metafile() function is possible in R under Linux.
But as has been pointed out, (1) There are many more important things for
the R-core developers to concentrate on, and (2) all contributions are
welcome.  

Note for example, that at the libEMF site
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/libemf), the libEMF author has not done
anything with it for nearly 2 years, not even to incorporate 2 (gcc 3
related) patches that (see Bugs, and Patches) even I as a complete novice in
C could apply to get libEMF working with pstoedit
(http://www.pstoedit.net/pstoedit) under Linux Mandrake 9.1. 

The on-hold status of libEMF suggests to me that there has been no clamor
for the libEMF author to incorporate these simple patches, nor update the
library for widespread use.  

Thanks,
Bill

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

Biometrics Research Department
Merck Research Laboratories
PO Box 2000, MailDrop RY33-300  
126 E. Lincoln Avenue
Rahway, New Jersey 07065-0900
USA

Phone: 732 594 3913
Fax: 732 594 1565


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk] 
> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 7:16 AM
> To: ucgamdo at ucl.ac.uk
> Cc: Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk; r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] Re: win.metafiles in linux and R
> 
> 
> On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 ucgamdo at ucl.ac.uk wrote:
> 
> > I posted a similar query some months ago. Some people 
> answered stating that
> > win.metafiles were not available for R in linux. However, I 
> was suggested
> > to use the package RSvgDevice, which allows transforming 
> any graphic device
> > into Scalable Vector Graphics format, this file can then be 
> opened with
> > sodipodi, and really impresive stuff can be achieved. I 
> also noticed that
> > OpenOffice for linux has an option to open win.metafiles, 
> so it seems that
> > they are in theory available for linux!
> 
> Code to *read* them is more widely available than to *write* them.
> Can sodipodi output wmf/emf?
> 
> Note that libEMF's help page says
> 
>   It is also possible now to generate EMF files from PSTOEDIT 
> on POSIX 
>   systems. Therefore, if your graphics code only outputs 
> PostScript, you 
>   can now easily convert it to EMF.
> 
> but that is only true on Windows (unfortunately).
> 
> -- 
> 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 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
> 
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