[Rd] plotmath problems with X11 fonts (Redhat 9)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Martin Maechler wrote:

> We've only switched from redhat 7.3 to 9 several weeks ago, and
> I found today, that the last three pages
> of
> 	demo(plotmath)
> uses quite wrong plot symbols, e.g  
> sum(....) gives (+) {+ in circle} instead of the Sigma-like
> summation --- but only in "text" not in title, i.e., probably a
> font problem.
> With postscript() {and hence dev.print() of x11()} all is fine.
> Hence it must be an X font server problem of some kind.
> Here is a reproducible example:
> 
>  xsum <- expression(sum(x[i], i = 1, n))
>  plot(1.1, main=xsum, xlab=xsum, ylab=xsum)
>  text(1,1,xsum)
> 
> which produces the graphic that I attach.
> If you can try this yourself _and_ if you see the same effect,
> could you tell me (or us) what OS / setup / ... you are using?
> 
> Could R try better to get proper X11 fonts?

You mean the desired ones?  (Presumably they are proper.)  Yes.

It tries

"-*-symbol-*-*-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

What does

xlsfonts -fn "-*-symbol-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

give on your system?  I have

-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-p-61-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--11-80-100-100-p-61-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-p-74-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--14-100-100-100-p-85-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--14-140-75-75-p-85-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--17-120-100-100-p-95-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-107-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--20-140-100-100-p-107-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--24-240-75-75-p-142-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--25-180-100-100-p-142-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--34-240-100-100-p-191-adobe-fontspecific
-adobe-symbol-medium-r-normal--8-80-75-75-p-51-adobe-fontspecific
-urw-symbol-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-fontspecific
-urw-symbol-medium-r-normal--17-120-100-100-p-0-adobe-fontspecific

I presume we should have

"-*-symbol-*-*-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-adobe-*"

but your listing will tell us the problem.

BTW, I think we should be giving the user some control over this, to get
adobe in preference to urw or iso10646 in preference to iso8859, or 
whatever.

-- 
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