[R] RFC: default background on lattice plots

[Deepayan Sarkar]

Hi,

Many of the complaints about lattice stem from the default settings
(a.k.a. theme) on screen devices, which has a grey background. It's
easy enough to change this, even pseudo-permanently through a startup
script, so this is not a serious problem. However, there's one
situation where this has an unfortunate effect: on Windows, someone
might

1. create a plot (on screen)
2. right click on it and print

which will print with the grey background and all (which is not a good
thing). Unfortunately, this is so easy to do that saying `this is not
the way to do it' is pointless (especially to students). I don't know
of a way to change the settings when this is done (and that's not the
goal of dev.print anyway). The one time I tried something similar on
S-Plus (Linux) it made the background white but retained the other
(light) colors, which is not a good solution either, even if it could
be done.

All this is to say that I'm inclined to change the default settings
for the windows() device before R 2.3.0 is released. The current plan
is to use the PDF defaults, which you can view on-screen using

library(lattice)
show.settings(canonical.theme("pdf"))

No changes are planned for any other device.

Not being a Windows user, I don't really care either way, so I'm open
to suggestions.
If you have any comments or opinions, please let me know (preferably
off-list, unless it's something of general interest).

Deepayan
--
http://www.stat.wisc.edu/~deepayan/