[R] graphics history

Duncan Murdoch murdoch at stats.uwo.ca
Mon Apr 21 13:56:38 CEST 2008


On 21/04/2008 4:59 AM, Norbert NEUWIRTH wrote:
> dear useRs and developeRs,
> 
> I am afraid it is a very basic question, but I did not find anything alike in the literature.
> 
> The R standard graphics device shows the opportunity to activate the history of plots drawn within the current session. Th user can scroll back and see the last graphs (or same graph with some changes in parameters). I did not find out yet how to activate the history by code.  Any ideas?

When you open the window, use windows(record=TRUE).

If you want this to happen by default, write your own wrapper for the 
windows() graphics device:

  windows <- function(..., record=TRUE)
     grDevices::windows(..., record=record)

One thing I'd like to do, but didn't have time to implement before 
2.7.0, is to have history set to some finite size, e.g. a default might 
be the last 3 or 10 plots.  The problem with record=TRUE is that it 
keeps a record of all the plots, so memory use just increases and increases.

Duncan Murdoch



More information about the R-help mailing list