[R] graphics ignore tabs in text

[Paul Murrell]

Hi


Marc Schwartz wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-10-31 at 09:13 -0500, Liaw, Andy wrote:
>> Dear R-help,
>>
>> I seem to recall that I can use "\t" to get tab in a string on a
>> graphics device, but it doesn't seem to work.  Try:
>>
>> lab <- "a\tb\tc"
>> cat(lab, "\n")       # works in the console output
>> plot(1:5, main=lab)  # no tabs in the title
>> text(3, 3, lab)      # no tabs in the text
>>
>> I get the same result both in the windows() and pdf() devices.  Any
>> ideas?
>>
>> This is R-patched Windows binary just downloaded from CRAN.
>> R version 2.4.0 Patched (2006-10-29 r39744)
>>
>> Best,
>> Andy
> 
> Andy, 
> 
> I don't believe that tab expansion works in plots, though I will stand
> to be corrected on that.


I'm surprised that this has never come up before, but I know of no
special handling of tabs in the graphics code.  I suspect if we wanted
to do something we would have to add code to detect '\t' and replace it
with a number of spaces (maybe based on a user-settable option).

Paul


> Using the X11() device on FC5 (which I recreated using png() and
> attached here), you can clearly see the dashed boxes where the tab
> character (non-printable 0x9) is being drawn. However, it is one
> character, not expanded as is the case in a textual console/GUI.
> 
> What are you trying to accomplish? 
> 
> Perhaps there is a better way (ie. to do column alignments, etc.) such
> as textplot() in the gplots package.
> 
> HTH,
> 
> Marc Schwartz
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Dr Paul Murrell
Department of Statistics
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