[R] Windows plots & fontsize

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, [ISO-8859-1] Halldor Björnsson wrote:

> I recently wrote a package that runs on both Linux and Windows.
> The functions fetch data to an SQL database and make diverse plots, usually 
> with many labels and annotations.
>
> I recently noticed that on SOME windows computers the fonts
> in the plots were too large, which caused labels to overlap.

What graphics device are you talking about for your plots?

> On other windows computers this does not happen.
> However on both computers the command par("ps") gives 12

As one would expect.  But are the windows the same size?

> Now, windows is not my forte, but it seems likely that this has to do with 
> some user/system settings. If so, my users would probably object to me 
> tweaking their windows setup since it might have an effect on other programs.

Windows will be asked for the same fonts, but the window size may differ: 
see the help page.  And users can apply magnification factors.

> One simple solution is to use par(ps=10), but I cannot find out how to
> set this globally.
>
> a) Does anyone know how I can set par(ps=10) by default on all figure?

I think you want to start the device with pointsize=10.

?windows lists the options you have, if it is the device.

> b) Is there a windows specific way to set default fontsizes in figures?

It is device-specific, usually parameter `pointsize'.

-- 
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