[R] Is there a package for digitizing or reading jpegs, ets. in R?

[Ross Ihaka]

Peter Hovmand wrote:

> I'm interested in digitizing some scanned time series, and looking for 
> a solution that is easy and flexible. I thought I might be able to use 
> R's locator() if I could get the image into a device. I noticed that 
> there are some packages like (rimage), but it (a) doesn't seem to be 
> available for the Windows version and forces me to upgrade a bunch of 
> libraries for my linux system. It seems like someone should have 
> something for digitizing maps and/or there something very obvious that 
> I am missing here. Any suggestions would be appreciated! 

I have used "xfig" with some success.  You suck your image into xfig and 
give it a large depth.  Next you draw contours and scales over the top 
of the image.  The xfig coordinates can be converted to appropriate 
coordinates with a linear transformation.  I have done a number of 
 coastlines and topographic maps this way.