[R] 回复： Italicize Greek symbols in axis

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 11-06-21 8:15 AM, Bingzhang Chen wrote:
> Prof. Ripley,
>
> Thanks. A stupid question: how to find out the codes (e.g.,u03bc)  for the Greek
> letters?

That's a Unicode code point, so you can look it up online, e.g. here:

http://inamidst.com/stuff/unidata/

The mu is in the "Greek and Coptic" section.  Not all R graphics devices 
have access to the same fonts, so experiment a bit before you make a choice.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> I am trying to italicize the mu in a mathematical expression placed as a label
> for an axis of a graph (but other letters remain plain). I am working on the
> Windows platform. I seem to find out a solution: to copy the µ from the
> character map and use  italic(µ) in the expression.
>
> Bingzhang
>
>
>
> ----- 原始邮件 ----
> 发件人： Prof Brian Ripley<ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
> 收件人： Bingzhang Chen<elanchen2001 at yahoo.com.cn>
> 抄   送： r-help at r-project.org
> 发送日期： 2011/6/21 (周二) 5:56:05 下午
> 主   题： Re: [R] Italicize Greek symbols in axis
>
> On Tue, 21 Jun 2011, Bingzhang Chen wrote:
>
>> Hello there,
>>
>> Is there any way to italicize Greek symbols such as mu in axis? From the help
>> files of mathematical anotations: "Note that bold, italic and bolditalic do
> not
>> apply to symbols, and hence not to the Greek symbols such as mu which are
>> displayed in the symbol font.  They also do not apply to numeric constants.",
>> it
>> seems that it cannot be done.
>
> That refers to the mathematical symbol mu and not the Greek letter mu (it is not
> clear what you are actually quoting: maybe because in ?plotmath 'symbols' is
> emphasized).  And ?plotmath goes on to say
>
>    This can often be used to display Greek \emph{letters} in bold or italic.
>
> Did you try that?  So see if  "\u03bc" works, e.g.
>
> plot(1:10)
> text(5, 2, "\u03bc", font = 3)
>
> On most devices there is no italic symbol font, and even if it were available,
> it is not included in the R graphics model of fonts 1:5. If you do have such a
> font family, you should be able to set it up as the 'family' argument of your
> (unspecified) graphics device.
>
> Note that there is no italic version of the Adobe symbol font in the standard
> implementation of PDF nor postscript nor X11 nor in the Windows font set (and
> hence as far as I aware neither in the Apple version of those TrueType fonts).
> Some devices, e.g. those using cairographics, may synthesize an italic symbol
> font from glyphs in non-symbol fonts.
>
> Please do remember to include the 'at a minimum' information requested in the
> posting guide: much better answers to questions like this can be given if you
> specify the platform and graphics device you use.
>
>
>> Thanks,
>> Bingzhang Chen
>
> -- Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>
>
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