[R] A trivial plot gives open circles as the plot char but another one gives me "q"s . . why is this?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012, peter dalgaard wrote:

>
> On Apr 3, 2012, at 07:19 , Philip Rhoades wrote:
>
>> People,
>>
>> On my home computer with a real plot I get what I expect - open 
>> circles as the plot character - on my work computer I get "q"s ! 
>> So I tried a trivial test plot on the work computer ie:
>>
>
> Argh. I have forgotten this before... There was a configuration 
> issue leading to plotting symbols showing up as "q", but I can't 
> recall the details. Possibly libpango-related (do you have it 
> installed?)

We were not told the device ....  This is well-known for pdf() and 
poppler-based PDF viewers so you could try the workaround in ?pdf.

I don't really see how this could happen on the default X11 device, as 
it draws circles rather than uses fonts.


>
> -pd
>
>
>> a <- c(1,2,3,4,5)
>> b <- c(1,2,3,4,5)
>> plot(a,b)
>>
>> and that also gives me open circles as it should! - the plot line 
>> in my real script is:
>>
>> plot( means5[ ,4 ], means6[ ,4 ], xlab="640loci-50reps Gen4(-1) Rst", ylab="ADf" )
>>
>> I have tried adding the "pch=x" command with no effect . . what is 
>> going on?  (Both computers have the same fonts installed although 
>> the home computer is Fedora 16 and the work one is Fedora 15).  It 
>> is very frustrating . .
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Phil.
>> --
>> Philip Rhoades
>>
>> GPO Box 3411
>> Sydney NSW	2001
>> Australia
>> E-mail:  phil at pricom.com.au
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> -- 
> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> Phone: (+45)38153501
> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

-- 
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