[R] fighting with ps.options and xlim/ylim

[Marc Schwartz]

On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 20:18, ivo welch wrote:
> thank you, marc.  I will play around with these parameters tomorrow at 
> my real computer.  yes, the idea is to just create an .eps and .pdf 
> file, which is then \includegraphics[0.25\textwidth]{} in pdflatex.  I 
> need to tweak with the parameter ps.options(pointsize) because 
> otherwise, I end up with 5pt fonts---which is not readable.  And once I 
> do this, I need different R parameter defaults on the axes.  With the 
> advice I have gotten, I think I am all set now.  However, I am a little 
> bit surprised that noone has written a package around this task---there 
> must be many people that have to produce quarter-page (or half-page) 
> graphics, and probably everyone is tweaking plot parameters a bit 
> differently.  It would be nice to build in some of this intelligence 
> into plot parameters, themselves.   of course, R is a free volunteer 
> effort, and I am grateful for all the stuff that has been done already.
> 
> /iaw


You might want to try to set the 'height' and 'width' arguments for
postscript() to something larger than the defaults. For example, use 6 x
6 (if square) and then use your code above to scale the plot down to
size. That might help with your font size and spacing problem, rather
than adjusting the point size.

I don't have a 'rule of thumb', but experience suggests that downsizing
a plot that is too big is better than upsizing one that is too small,
especially for a partial page.

I have done some other things using the 'seminar' LaTeX package for
landscape orientation slides and there I generally use the exact size
for the EPS files. But that is generally the only time that I do that.

YMMV,

Marc