[R] problem with Hershey fonts

[Paul Murrell]

Hi


Ray Brownrigg wrote:
> This was reported to me by a colleague in China, so I may not be
> reproducing exactly what they are seeing (which I suspect is rw2011), but
> this is what I see:
> 
>>version
> 
> 	 _
> platform i386--netbsdelf
> arch     i386
> os       netbsdelf
> system   i386, netbsdelf
> status
> major    2
> minor    1.1
> year     2005
> month    06
> day      20
> language R
> 
>>help(Hershey)
> 
> 	:
> 	:
>      If the 'vfont' argument to one of the text-drawing functions
>      ('text', 'mtext', 'title', 'axis', and 'contour') is a character
>      vector of length 2, Hershey vector fonts are used to render the
>      text.
> 	:
>           The other useful escape sequences all begin with '\\'.  These
>           are described below. Remember that backslashes have to be
>           doubled in R character strings, so they need to be entered
>           with _four_ backslashes.
> 	:
> 	:
> 
>>plot(runif(100))	# to get something on the screen
>>text(0, 1, '\\Re', vfont=c('serif', 'plain'))	# works
>>title(main = '\\Re', vfont=c('serif','plain'))	# doesn't work, and...
> 
> Warning message:
> parameter "vfont" could not be set in high-level plot() function
> 
>>mtext('\\Re', 2, vfont=c('serif','plain'))	# doesn't work, but...
> 
> Warning message:
> Hershey fonts not yet implemented for mtext() in: mtext(text, side, line, outer, at, adj, padj, cex, col, font,
> 
>>axis(3, at=50, tick=F, labels='\\Re', vfont=c('serif','plain'))	# doesn't work 
> 
> 
> Now at least mtext() 'redeems' itself with its Warning, but title()
> contradicts the help(Hershey), and axis() just gets it wrong by printing
> the characters "\Re" (or "\\Re" when the string is specified as
> '\\\\Re' as alluded to in the Hershey documentation - but somewhat
> contradicted by the success of the text() call above).
> 
> Now perhaps the problem is just with the Hershey documentation (or my
> reading of it), but I don't know what is supposed to work.  Or is there
> some combination that I haven't tried?


The problem with title() has been reported before (PR#7031), but thanks 
for pointing out the extension to axis() and mtext() as well.

The "good" news is that the 'vfont' argument has been superseded.  It 
was a horrible way of incorporating Hershey fonts (I should know, I did 
it) and a much better way now exists via par(family=).  The following 
modification of your example should work:

plot(runif(100))	# to get something on the screen
oldf <- par(family="HersheySerif")
text(0, 1, '\\Re')
title(main = '\\Re')
mtext('\\Re', 2)
axis(3, at=50, tick=F, labels='\\Re')
par(oldf)

The bad news is that, as you point out, the documentation is lacking.  I 
will make some updates so that this solution is easier to find in future.

Paul
-- 
Dr Paul Murrell
Department of Statistics
The University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland
New Zealand
64 9 3737599 x85392
paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/