[R] Plot symbols: How to plot (and save) a graphic symbols originating from a table
David Winsemius
dwinsemius at comcast.net
Sat Jan 1 20:59:16 CET 2011
On Jan 1, 2011, at 2:15 PM, Victor F Seabra wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Please, I have a doubt regarding symbol plotting
> with data originating from a table.
I would say it has very little to do with the data structure and
everything to do with the encodings, font conventions of console
output, and the defaults for graphical devices. (I'm using a Mac in an
English locale, and you have not provided any of the requested
information about your setup.)
>
> Please, see below:
>
> I have a tab delimited file called table1.txt with 4 columns:
>
> ypos animal var1 var2
> 5 cat gina <= lady gina \u2264 lady
> 7 dog bill >= tony bill \u2265 tony
> 9 fish dude <= bro dude \u2264 bro
>
> #I then load in the data to R:
> table1<-read.table("table1.txt", header=TRUE, sep="\t")
>
> #if I take a look at the table I realize that \u2264 was replaced by
> \\u2264
> table1
>
No. You are more likely seeing how R presents what it did with \u2264
with its default method for printing to the console. I see:
> table1
ypos animal var1 var2
1 5 cat gina <= lady gina ≤ lady
2 7 dog bill >= tony bill ≥ tony
3 9 fish dude <= bro dude ≤ bro
Subject, of course, to how emailers handle the \u2264 character.
> str(table1)
'data.frame': 3 obs. of 4 variables:
$ ypos : num 5 7 9
$ animal: Factor w/ 3 levels "cat","dog","fish": 1 2 3
$ var1 : Factor w/ 3 levels "bill >= tony",..: 3 1 2
$ var2 : Factor w/ 3 levels "bill ≥ tony",..: 3 1 2
> #So, if i try to plot the data
> #instead of greater/equal or lesser/equal I get
> #a text string plotted "\u2265"
> plot
> (1:1,col="white",xlim=c(1,10),ylim=c(1,10),ylab="",axes=FALSE,xlab="")
> text(y=table1$ypos,x=2,table1$animal)
> text(y=table1$ypos,x=4,table1$var1)
> text(y=table1$ypos,x=8,table1$var2)
>
> #this can be fixed if I manually erase the extra "\" on var2
> fix(table1)
I'm confused. You are starting with a factor variable whose levels
have some higher order numbers in the character vector, and then you
didn't assign the results of the fix() operation to an R object. Why
should that do _anything_?
> plot
> (1:1,col="white",xlim=c(1,10),ylim=c(1,10),ylab="",axes=FALSE,xlab="")
> text(y=table1$ypos,x=2,table1$animal)
> text(y=table1$ypos,x=4,table1$var1)
> text(y=table1$ypos,x=8,table1$var2)
>
> #However if I save the graph to a ps file, it shows the "<=" sign as
> "..."
> postscript("teste3.ps", width = 22, height =
> 11.5,pointsize=24,paper="special",bg="transparent")
> plot
> (1:1,col="white",xlim=c(1,10),ylim=c(1,10),ylab="",axes=FALSE,xlab="")
> text(y=table1$ypos,x=2,table1$animal)
> text(y=table1$ypos,x=4,table1$var1)
> text(y=table1$ypos,x=8,table1$var2)
> dev.off()
>
That must be the glyph for that number in the default font for your
pdf device (as it is for mine once I change the width settings so it
can be seen after conversion to pdf.)
?Encoding # might be a useful place to start, followed by...
?Devices
?ps.options
>
> #My solution was to plot "<" or ">" instead of "<=" and ">="
> # and then plot an hifen under the "<" or the ">" sign.
> # This worked to fix both problems, but is hard to do and
> # impossible to automate (or at least very difficult)
>
> #Please, does anyone know a better approach?
To accomplish what end? You have not described what you are trying to
actually do. Is this text supposed to be plotted inside the plotting
area or are you going to be using it as axis labels? There is a
variety of approaches (especially the plotmath expression option) that
can be used depending on the ultimate objective.
?plotmath
Compare:
plot(NULL, xlim=c(0,1), ylim=c(0,1))
text(0.5,0.5, as.expression(as.character(table1$var2[1])) )
text(0.5,0.6, label=expression(gina <= lady) )
> #thanks in advance
>
> Victor Faria Seabra, MD
> vseabra at uol.com.br
--
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT
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