# [R] How can I use a script "l" (LaTeX \ell) in mathematical annotation of plots?

Byron Dom byron_dom at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 24 18:44:31 CEST 2013



Thanks. That works for me too.

I had worked that out based on Brian's response to my original post.

If you read thru my response to him in detail, you'll see:

> Here are a couple of examples using it that worked:
>   > plot(1:10,xlab="\u2113")
>   >
>  plot(1:10,xlab="\u2113(\u2113 + 1)")

________________________________
From: Eik Vettorazzi <E.Vettorazzi at uke.de>
To: Byron Dom <byron_dom at yahoo.com>; r help <r-help at r-project.org>
Cc: "ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk" <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 2:50 AM
Subject: Re: [R] How can I use a script "l" (LaTeX \ell) in mathematical annotation of plots?

this works for me:

plot(1,main="\u2113")

cheers

Am 24.10.2013 01:39, schrieb Byron Dom:
>
>
> Original post: On 13/10/2013 18:53, Byron Dom wrote:
>
>>> Due to convention a script "l" - $$\ell$$ (LaTeX \ell) is used to
>>> represent a certain quantity in something I'm working on. I'm
>>> unable to figure out how to use it in R. It's not included in the
>>> list on ?plotmath.
>>>
>>> Can anyone tell me how to use it?  Its unicode is U+2113. This
>>> page has a list of various encodings of it:
>>>
>  http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2113/encoding.htm.
>>> Is there a way to include it by using one of these encodings somehow?
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> On 13/10/2013 22:06 Prof Brian Ripley responded:
>
>> What do you want to do with it?  plotmath is about plotting, but you
>> have not otherwise mentioned that, let alone the device on which you
>> want to plot.
>>
>> Read the help for plotmath: on some plot devices, just use "\u2113".  It
>> is not AFAICS in the Adobe symbol encoding.
>>
>> --
>> 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
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> My response:
>
> Thanks I worked out how to do it based on your mention of "u2113".
> See below.
>
> I'm sorry if my information wasn't complete enough. I assumed that
> what I said, combined with the subject ("How can I use a script "l"
> (LaTeX \ell) in
>  mathematical annotation of plots?") would have been
> enough.
>
> I just wanted to be able to do this on the default device, which
> displays plots within the R session window. I have a simple path
> to go from there to .png form, which I include in LaTeX documents
> and for other purposes. I am using R version 3.0.1 in Windows 7,
> for which I believe the default plot device is "windows".
>
> An example of the kind of thing I wanted to do is to include
> "ylab = expression(hat(gamma))" (which is equivalent to the LaTex
> "\hat{\gamma}}") among the base-graphics plot() arguments. That
> works. In LaTeX a script "l" is produced with "\ell", but
> something like "ylab = expression(ell)" doesn't work in R.
> I wanted to be able to do the equivalent of that, but to obtain "ℓ".
>
> Here are a couple of examples using it that worked:
>   > plot(1:10,xlab="\u2113")
>   >
>  plot(1:10,xlab="\u2113(\u2113 + 1)")
> The only (slight) problem with this is the minor aesthetic issue
>
> that the "ℓ" one gets this way is in an obviously different font
>
> from what one gets using the LaTeX "\lambda" command/symbol.
>
> Strangely, earlier, when I tried
>   > plot(1:10,xlab=expression(symbol("\u2113")))
> it did the same thing as
>   > plot(1:10,xlab=expression(lambda))
> So I got a lower-case greek lambda - "λ", rather than "ℓ"
> (script "l").
>
> When I used the unicode representation for lowercase
> lambda - "λ" - as follows
>   >
>  plot(1:10,xlab=expression(symbol("\u03bb")))
> I got this for an x-axis label: "<Y+03BB>". On the other hand,
> the following did work
>   > plot(1:10,xlab="\u03bb"),
> giving me an x-axis label of lambda - "λ".
>     [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

--
Eik Vettorazzi

Department of Medical Biometry and Epidemiology
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