[R] lattice: simultaneously control aspect & outer whitespace

[Deepayan Sarkar]

On 8/7/09, Jacob Wegelin <jacob.wegelin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Suppose we wish to achieve the following three aims:
>  (1) Control the aspect ratio of our plot (i.e., tweak this till it looks
>  great)
>
>  (2) Save the plot as a PDF with zero or minimal white space outside it.
>
>  (3) Preserve this in code, so that in the future the exact same plot can be
>  reproduced by simply sourcing the code.
>
>  I can almost achieve (1) and (2) on my MacBook Pro by pointing and clicking,
>  as follows:
>
>    •   Start with graphics.off().
>
>    •   Generate the plot  on the computer screen; then the outer margins are
>  pretty thin by default.
>
>    •   Use the mouse to adjust the aspect ratio until it looks right.
>
>  The fact that I pointed and clicked precludes (3).

Once you have resized to a suitable size, use

par("din")

to find the current dimensions, and then use these as 'width' and
'height' arguments to pdf().

-Deepayan