[R] X11 plot window sizes

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 9:06 AM, Mark Knecht<markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>   I'm not understanding how the width & height parameters are
> supposed to work. When I execute the following 4 commands:
>
> X11()
> X11(width=20, height=20)
> X11(width=20, height=10)
> X11(width=40, height=40)
>
> I get the following *approximate* physical sizes on my screen:
>
> 6" x 6"
> 8" x 8"
> 12" x 6"
> 8" x 8"
>
>   For now I'm assuming that my pointsize isn't quite the same as
> expected (1/72") which probably accounts for why I'm getting 6"
> windows instead of the default 7" window, but why does 20x20 == 40x40,
> and why on the 20x10 version do I get a 6" height?
>
> Thanks,
> Mark
>

OK, not that anyone doing statistics actually cares about this post
but the internal rules appear to be this:

1) DOCUMENTED - X11 does not create an initial drawing window any
larger than 85% of the screen. On my system that's around 10" high on
a 19" monitor, so X11(height=10) produces what I'm looking for while
anything larger does not. It's fixed at 10".  Additionally width=14.2
is about the maximum I can do horizontally.

2) NOT DOCUMENTED (as far as I can tell so far) - If you choose a
value in either direction larger than the value that naturally creates
an 85% window then X11 scales the plot space to be 85% in one
direction and keeps the aspect ratio that you specified. For instance,
on my system X11(height=20, width=10) produces a window that is 10"
high (85%) and 5" wide. (as per aspect ration of width/height in the
invocation)

Bye,
Mark