[R] Set window title for plot on any OS

[Simon Zehnder]

Hi Duncan,

thank you very much for your advice! That makes it all work. 

I check in addition for a "title" argument in the device via

if (any(names(getOption("device")) == TRUE)) {
	dev.new(title = "title")
} 

Thanks again!

Simon

On Jul 13, 2013, at 2:40 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 13-07-13 1:33 PM, Simon Zehnder wrote:
>> Dear R-Users,
>> 
>> I am writing a package using S4 classes. In the generic method "plot" I want to set the title for the plotting window as I will have several windows and window titles help the users to distinguish the graphics without putting a title into the plot itself (this can be done by users whenever they want)
>> 
>> So I created a helper function .setDeviceTitle which I called after the plot has been done:
>> 
>> ".setDeviceTitle" <- function(title = "title", dev = dev.cur()) {
>> 	dev <- names(dev)[1]
>> 	
>> 	## check for OS ##
>> 	if (dev == "windows") {
>> 		windows(title = title)
>> 	} else if (dev == "X11") {
>> 		X11(title = title)
>> 	} else {
>> 		quartz(title = title)
>> 	}
>> }
>> 
>> The result is a new device with the title in addition to the old. Is it possible to give a window a title after the plot has been done? If not: Before I plot the device I cannot know what device it will be, so I thought about a check via capabilities():
>> 
>> if (any(names(capabilities()) == "X11")) {
>> 	X11(title = title)
>> }
>> else if (any(names(capabilities)) == "windows") {
>> 	windows(title = title)
>> } else {
>> 	quartz(title = title)
>> }
>> 
>> I want to have a safe method, which works on each OS R can run. How would you solve the problem?
> 
> Use dev.new() rather than picking a particular device.  If all the possible devices support the "title" argument, then
> 
> dev.new(title=title)
> 
> will be fine.  If you might need more customization (or want to protect against a user who chooses a device that doesn't have "title" as an argument), use getOption("device") to examine the call that will be used.
> 
> Duncan Murdoch
>