[Rd] New version of X11, png and jpeg

Roger D. Peng rpeng at jhsph.edu
Tue Feb 26 15:44:18 CET 2008


Thanks, running r44621 works well (on my FC5 box) and I can make various plots 
(I just did some limited testing).

When I run the 'TestChars()' example in 'points' I get many warnings of the form:

1: In plot.xy(xy.coords(x, y), type = type, ...) :
   pch value '128' is invalid in this locale
2: In plot.xy(xy.coords(x, y), type = type, ...) :
   pch value '129' is invalid in this locale
3: In plot.xy(xy.coords(x, y), type = type, ...) :
   pch value '130' is invalid in this locale

The warnings go until

49: In plot.xy(xy.coords(x, y), type = type, ...) :
   pch value '176' is invalid in this locale
50: In plot.xy(xy.coords(x, y), type = type, ...) :
   pch value '177' is invalid in this locale

after which I think the warnings are not saved.  Given the note in 'points' I 
sense this is expected?

TestChars(sign = -1) and TestChars(font = 5) do not give any warnings but some 
odd looking characters do appear on the device.

Here is my sessionInfo:

 > sessionInfo()
R version 2.7.0 Under development (unstable) (--)
x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

locale:
LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8;LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8;LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8;LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8;LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] lattice_0.17-6     RColorBrewer_1.0-2 cacher_0.1-1

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] digest_0.3.1 grid_2.7.0   tools_2.7.0


-roger

Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> Revision r44621 supports (in a limited way) cairo 1.0 and hence I believe 
> vanilla FC5 -- I found what purports to be a vanilla FC5 box and it works 
> quite well there.
> 
> Two people have reported that the svg(), cairo-pdf() and cairo-ps() 
> devices produce blank (but not empty) files.  I was able to confirm that 
> on Debian etch (cairo 1.2.4).  They do work on cairo 1.4.14 (F8) and 
> better on a 1.5.10 snapshot.
> 
> We've got a working version on Mac OS X, but you need to install cairo.
> 
> Finally, the quality of the fonts you see will depend on what fonts you 
> have installed: if you only have X11 bitmapped fonts, that is what you 
> will get (and I am getting on our minimally configured Debian etch 
> machine).  Our Fedora installations are mainly using the URW Type 1 fonts 
> in the urw-fonts RPM.  One of the alternatives is RH's liberation fonts 
> (https://www.redhat.com/promo/fonts/).
> 
> On Mon, 25 Feb 2008, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> 
>> That call is from Cairo 1.2, so looks like our test FC5 box had a later 
>> version of the cairo libraries than the one pkg-config reported.
>>
>> You should be able to build with --without-cairo until such a time as we can 
>> add a suitable configure test.
>>
>> Thank you for the report.
>>
>> On Mon, 25 Feb 2008, Roger Peng wrote:
>>
>>> (Apologies, I meant to 'Reply to all' the first time but forgot).
>>>
>>> I built r44608 of R-devel with (I think) cairo support.   At least,
>>> that's what the configure script told me.  In addition,
>>> 'capabilities("cairo")' is TRUE.  Calling X11(type = "Cairo") gives me
>>> the error:
>>>
>>> Error in X11() : X11 module cannot be loaded
>>> In addition: Warning message:
>>> In X11() :
>>> unable to load shared library
>>> '/home/rpeng/install/R-devel/lib64/R/modules//R_X11.so':
>>> /home/rpeng/install/R-devel/lib64/R/modules//R_X11.so: undefined
>>> symbol: cairo_image_surface_get_data
>>>
>>>
>>> I figured I must be missing a library somewhere, but I'm not sure how
>>> to track down which one.  Any thoughts here?
>>>
>>> I'm on a FC5 system with:
>>>
>>> cairo-devel-1.0.4-1
>>> cairo-1.0.4-1
>>> cairo-1.0.4-1
>>>
>>> and
>>>
>>> pango-1.12.4-4
>>> pango-devel-1.12.4-4
>>> pango-1.12.4-4
>>>
>>> Also, I have
>>>
>>> [rpeng at audrey R-source]$ pkg-config --modversion pango
>>> 1.12.4
>>> [rpeng at audrey R-source]$ pkg-config --modversion cairo
>>> 1.0.4
>>>
>>> -roger
>>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
>>> <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>> R-devel has new versions of the X11(), png() and jpeg() devices on
>>>>  Unix-alikes.  The intention is that these are used identically to the
>>>>  previous versions (which remain available) but will produce 
>>>> higher-quality
>>>>  output with more features.
>>>>
>>>>  Pros:
>>>>
>>>>  Antialiasing of text and lines (can be turned off) but no blurring of
>>>>  fills.
>>>>
>>>>  Buffering of the X11 display and fast repainting from a backing image.
>>>>  (The intention is to emulate the timer-based buffering of the windows()
>>>>  device in due course, but not for 2.7.0.)
>>>>
>>>>  Ability to use translucent colours, including backgrounds, and produce
>>>>  partially transparent PNG files.
>>>>
>>>>  Scalable text, including to sizes like 4.5 pt. This allows more accurate
>>>>  sizing on non-standard screen sizes (e.g. my home machine has a 90dpi
>>>>  1650x1024 display whereas standard X11 fonts are set up for 75 or 100
>>>>  dpi).
>>>>
>>>>  Full support for UTF-8, so on systems with suitable fonts you can plot in
>>>>  many languages on a single figure (and this will work even in non-UTF-8
>>>>  locales).  The output should be locale-independent (unlike the current
>>>>  devices where even English text is rendered slightly differently in
>>>>  Latin-1 and UTF-8 locales).
>>>>
>>>>  A utility function savePlot() to make a PNG/JPEG/TIFF copy of the current
>>>>  plot.
>>>>
>>>>  The new png() and jpeg() devices do not require an X server to be 
>>>> running.
>>>>
>>>>  Cons:
>>>>
>>>>  Needs more software installed - cairo, pango and support packages (which
>>>>  on all the systems we have looked at are pulled in by the packages 
>>>> checked
>>>>  for).  You will see something like
>>>>
>>>>    Additional capabilities:   PNG, JPEG, iconv, MBCS, NLS, cairo
>>>>                                                            ^^^^^
>>>>  if configure finds the software we are looking for.
>>>>
>>>>  Slower under some circumstances (although on the test systems much faster
>>>>  than packages Cairo and cairoDevice).  This will be particularly true for
>>>>  X11() with a slow connection between the machine running R and the X
>>>>  server.
>>>>
>>>>  The additional software might not work correctly.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  The new versions are not currently the default, but can be made so by
>>>>  setting X11.options(type="Cairo"), e.g. as a load hook for package
>>>>  grDevices.  I am using
>>>>
>>>>  setHook(packageEvent("grDevices", "onLoad"),
>>>>      function(...) {
>>>>          grDevices::ps.options(horizontal=FALSE)
>>>>          if(getRversion() >= '2.7.0') grDevices::X11.options(type="Cairo")
>>>>      })
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  Please try these out and let us know how you get on.  As a check, try the
>>>>  TestChars() examples in ?points - on one Solaris 10 system a few of the
>>>>  symbol font characters were incorrect.  It worked on an FC5 system with
>>>>
>>>>  auk% pkg-config --modversion pango
>>>>  1.12.4
>>>>  auk% pkg-config --modversion cairo
>>>>  1.0.4
>>>>
>>>>  so the versions required are not all recent.
>>>>
>>>>  Although these devices would in principle work on Mac OS X, neither cairo
>>>>  nor pango is readily available.  We are working on other versions for
>>>>  Mac OS (X11 based on cairo/freetype, png/jpeg based on Quartz).
>>>>
>>>>  There are also new svg() and tiff() devices.
>>>>
>>>>  --
>>>>  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
>>>>
>>>>  ______________________________________________
>>>>  R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>>  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Roger D. Peng  |  http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~rpeng/
>>>
>> -- 
>> 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
>>
> 

-- 
Roger D. Peng  |  http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~rpeng/



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