[R] ggplot2: setting global graphic parameters with png driver

[Xavier Chardon]

Sorry I forgot these informations. I'm using R 2.70, under Linux (Debian 
Etch). The png driver uses cairo, and the version of libcairo installed 
is 1.2.4 (which is not the latest, but more recent versions are not 
available is the debian stable repositories)

I tried bitmap(), and it does not look good, because there is no 
antialiasing.

I tried a lot of different settings with png(). Setting the size in 
inches and the resolution did not help. pointsize does help, but seems 
limited: increasing pointsize does not do anything after a certain 
value. It's like there's a maximum font size in pixels that I can 
achieve. Does that make any sense?
This size is barely OK if I want an image of 1024x1024 pixels, which 
should be OK.

However, there is still the problem of line width, wich are not affected 
by "pointsize". Of course, I can modify the linewidth directly for every 
plot, but it would be easier with a global setting of ggplot ?

Many thanks,

Xavier

Prof Brian Ripley a écrit :
> You forgot to mention your version of R and your platform (and R has 
> at least 3 separate png() devices).
>
> In 2.7.0, specify the size in inches and increase the resolution.
> In earlier versions, try bitmap().  From NEWS for 2.7.0
>
>     o    Considerable efforts have been made to make the default output
>     from graphics devices as similar as possible (and in
>     particular close to that from postscript/pdf).    Many devices
>     were misinterpreting 'pointsize' in some way, for example as
>     being in device units (pixels) rather than in points.
>
>
> On Tue, 29 Apr 2008, Xavier Chardon wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I prepared a few charts with ggplot2, and was happy with the results 
>> as displayed on screen.
>> I tried to draw them with a PNG driver instead. But I ran into 
>> several problems while trying to increase the resolution of the picture.
>>
>> Mainly, when I increased the picture size (e.g png(width=1024, 
>> height=768) ), the texts (title, labels, etc...) where too small. I 
>> tried to set the "pointsize" option of the driver. That did the 
>> trick, to some extent. But it seems limited, and I couldn't get big 
>> enough fonts for high resolution images. Also, I tried the 
>> "resolution" setting of the driver. But this has an effect on lots of 
>> things, e.g. the length of the lines in the legend, so I gave up this 
>> idea.
>> I tried to change the font size of all elements, with e.g. 
>> grid.gedit("label", gp=gpar(cex=4) ). But the position of the labels 
>> does not change then, and with the bigger font, they are drawn on top 
>> of the axis or of its title.
>> Another problem was that the line width is also too small in big 
>> images. I couldn't find a way to change it globally.
>>
>> So, is there a way to go easily from a plot that looks good on screen 
>> (X11 driver) to a similar png image? Or is it possible to change the 
>> default settings of ggplot2 (line size and font size in particular, 
>> which are not covered by the ggopt function) ? I guess people usually 
>> export their charts as image files, so hopefully there's an easy 
>> solution.
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> Xavier
>>
>> ______________________________________________
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>> PLEASE do read the posting guide 
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>

-- 
Xavier Chardon
Thésard Institut de l'élevage / INRA
Projet ACTA "modélisation environnementale des systèmes bovins et porcins"

xavier.chardon at inst-elevage.asso.fr
xavier.chardon at rennes.inra.fr
02 23 48 50 91