[R] Bounding Box in pdf files

[Marc Schwartz]

On Tue, 2006-02-28 at 14:51 +1100, Mikael Anderson wrote:
> This is probably  a faq but I have not been able to find a solution.
> 
> I create a pdf file in R but latex complains that it can't find the bounding
> box. Here is an example:
> 
> > pdf(file="test.pdf", onefile=FALSE,  width=8,height=8)
> > plot(1:10)
> > dev.off()
> X11
>   2
> > sessionInfo()
> R version 2.2.1, 2005-12-20, sparc-sun-solaris2.9
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] "stats"     "graphics"  "grDevices" "utils"     "datasets"  "methods"
> [7] "base"
> 
> other attached packages:
>   mapdata   mapproj      maps
>  "2.0-17" "1.1-7.1"  "2.0-30"
> 
> This is the error from latex:
> 
> ! LaTeX Error: Cannot determine size of graphic in test.pdf  (no Bound
> ingBox).
> 
> Any thoughts about what the problem might be?
> 
> /Miakel


Are you using 'latex' or 'pdflatex' from the command line?

I am guessing the former given the error.

The former requires EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) files, whereas the
latter uses PDF files.

If you want (or need to) to stay with 'latex', you can generate EPS
files in R using a modification of your example above:

 postscript(file="test.pdf", onefile = FALSE, horizontal = FALSE,
            paper = "special", width = 8, height = 8)

 plot(1:10)
 dev.off()

See the Details section in ?postscript for more information.

The simplified advantage seen with using pdflatex and pdf graphics is
that it is a single step to go from TeX to PDF. In the case of using EPS
files with latex, it takes three steps, going from TeX to DVI to PS to
PDF. Of course shell scripts help with that process.

The advantage of using EPS files with latex is that there are certain
packages for TeX that do not work with pdflatex. So it depends upon what
you need to do.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz