[R] Need(?) way to create a "picture" (or "plot") of a data.frame

Duncan Murdoch murdoch.duncan at gmail.com
Thu Jul 31 14:06:40 CEST 2014


On 31/07/2014, 7:49 AM, John McKown wrote:
> OK, I'm probably using the wrong tool for this, but I'm doing
> everything else in this project in R, so I'm looking at how to do this
> too. I create a number of graphs using ggplot2. I use the png()
> function before the print(..graph.variable..) in order to create a PNG
> file which can be embedded in a MS PowerPoint display. This is working
> fairly well.
> 
> But what I need now is a way to create a png file which is basically a
> "picture" of what you might see when you simply display a data.frame
> using Rstudio or even from the command prompt. I considered just using
> sink() and print(), but I have two problems. First, it doesn't create
> a PNG output. Second, I need to put in text annotations, title, etc.
> So what I need might be what a "geom_data.table" would produce, if
> such a thing existed in ggplot2.
> 
> Is there another "plotting" package which will do such a weird thing?
> 

One way is to use your OS to do a screen (or window) capture, and save
the result to a .png file.

There are also functions like textbox() in the plotrix package which
allow you to display multiple lines of text; use capture.output() to
save what was printed, then textbox() to add it to a plot.

Duncan Murdoch



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