[R-SIG-Mac] How to put nice R graphics into powerpoint

[Phillip Price]

> Well I really appreciate the efforts and the willingness to help of 
> people on this list, but I agree that the pict format has no future 
> and I'd hate to see Stefano's precious time being invested in working 
> on a R device for it, considering that I can produce png with 
> acceptable quality, bot with R when R11 is running and in Illustrator, 
> by choosing export instead of save for office or save for the web. All 
> three of these export options save to png format, but only the first 
> one allows you to specify resolution. By cranking up resolution (150 
> instead of the default 72) I managed to create png graphics that do 
> not look fuzzy in PowerPoint.
>
> I am very surprised, however, that all those picture converters out 
> there only export to raster pict even when the starting format is 
> vector.
>
> I don't really wish to see any effort going into a wmf device for R 
> either, as wmf does not "always" import well into PowerPoint anyway. 
> Some weird things often happen.
>
> And finally, I don't intend to stay on a 1998 vintage PB for much 
> longer, I'll buy my own computer in the next few months if my employer 
> does not allow one. And then I can try Keynote!
>
> Denis

I would really like to find a solution to this, though, even if Denis 
can live without it!  Some colleagues insist on exchanging Powerpoint 
slides directly when we are preparing a presentation.

I usually create a PDF with R, and import it into Powerpoint for the 
mac.  The results are fuzzy and not good.  I don't have Illustrator.  
For final presentations I sometimes send the pdf to a colleague who has 
Illustrator, who converts it for me.

For weeks I've been intending to find a better way to do things, 
assuming that there must already be a solution in the R community and 
that I had just been too lazy to track it down.  If, instead, the 
actual state of things is that R cannot produce output that can be used 
well in the world's most popular presentation software, then I think 
this should be a fairly high-priority item.  (Of course, I say this 
from the standpoint of someone who will not actually be doing the work 
to implement a change, so, easy for _me_ to say)!

Anyway, I would love to see some kind of solution for this, though I 
don't know what that solution might be.

To those of you who continually work to make R better: thanks!

--Phil Price