[Rd] raster support in graphics devices

[Paul Murrell]

Hi


baptiste auguie wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> It seems to me that grid.raster is a special case of grid.rect as far
> as the intended visual output is concerned. The example below
> illustrates how both can be used to produce an image of the volcano
> data,


I disagree.  A "rect" grob is a vector object and a "raster" grob is a 
raster object and I think they should be kept distinct.  You could 
possibly create a higher-level "image" object that is agnostic with 
respect to how it is implemented and have both "rect"-based and 
"raster"-based versions of that, but "rect" and "raster" are graphical 
primitives and at that level I think the distinction is useful.

Paul


> d <- volcano
> 
> cols <- grey(t(d)/max(c(d)))
> xy <- expand.grid(x=seq(0, 1, length=ncol(d)), y=seq(0, 1, length=nrow(d)))
> 
> pdf("comparison.pdf", width=10, height=10/2*ncol(d)/nrow(d))
> pushViewport(viewport(layout=grid.layout(1, 2)))
> 
> pushViewport(viewport(layout.pos.r=1, layout.pos.c=1))
> grid.rect(xy$y, rev(xy$x), 1/(nrow(d)), 1/(ncol(d)),  gp=gpar(col=NA,
> fill=cols))
> grid.text("grid.rect")
> upViewport()
> 
> pushViewport(viewport(layout.pos.r=1, layout.pos.c=2))
> cols.mat <- matrix(cols, ncol=ncol(d), byrow=T)
> grid.raster(t(cols.mat))
> grid.text("grid.raster")
> dev.off()
> 
> Of course grid.raster provides a much better output in terms of file
> size, speed, visualisation artifacts, and interpolation. My question
> though: is it necessary to have a distinct grob for raster output?
> Couldn't "raster" be an option in grid.rect when the width and height
> are constant?
> 
> Alternatively, it might be useful to provide a function that converts
> a rectGrob into a rasterGrob,
> 
> rect2raster <- function(g){
> 
>   with(g,
>        rasterGrob(matrix(gp$fill, ncol=length(unique(x))), mean(x),mean(y)))
> }
> 
> This way, much of the existing code relying on grid.rect (e.g in
> lattice or ggplot2) could easily be adapted to work with grid.raster
> in favorable cases.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> baptiste
> 
> 
> 
> 2009/12/1 Paul Murrell <p.murrell at auckland.ac.nz>:
>> Hi
>>
>> This is for developers of extension packages that provide extra *graphics
>> devices* for R.
>>
>> In the *development* version of R, support has been added to the graphics
>> engine for sending raster images (bitmaps) to a graphics device.  This
>> consists mainly of two new device functions:  dev_Raster() and dev_Cap().
>>
>> The R_GE_version constant (in GraphicsEngine.h) has been bumped up to 6 as a
>> marker of this change.
>>
>> This means that, at a minimum, all graphics devices should be updated to
>> provide dummy implementations of these new functions that just say the
>> feature is not yet implemented (see for example the PicTeX and XFig devices
>> in the 'grDevices' package).
>>
>> A full implementation of dev_Raster() should be able to draw a raster image
>> (provided as an array of 32-bit R colors) at any size, possibly (bilinear)
>> interpolated (otherwise nearest-neighbour), at any orientation, and with a
>> per-pixel alpha channel.  Where these are not natively supported by a
>> device, the graphics engine provides some routines for scaling and rotating
>> raster images (see for example the X11 device).  The dev_Cap() function
>> should return a representation of a raster image captured from the current
>> device.  This will only make sense for some devices (see for example the
>> Cairo device in the 'grDevices' package).
>>
>> A little more information and a couple of small examples are provided at
>> http://developer.r-project.org/Raster/raster-RFC.html
>>
>> Paul
>> --
>> Dr Paul Murrell
>> Department of Statistics
>> The University of Auckland
>> Private Bag 92019
>> Auckland
>> New Zealand
>> 64 9 3737599 x85392
>> paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz
>> http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>

-- 
Dr Paul Murrell
Department of Statistics
The University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland
New Zealand
64 9 3737599 x85392
paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/