[R] Printing special characters

[Rui Barradas]

Às 10:15 de 16/01/2023, Martin Maechler escreveu:
>>>>>> Rui Barradas
>>>>>>      on Mon, 16 Jan 2023 08:46:43 +0000 writes:
> 
>      > Às 08:31 de 16/01/2023, Jeff Newmiller escreveu:
>      >> Use the Cairo PDF device?
>      >>
>      >> On January 16, 2023 12:18:48 AM PST, Dennis Fisher
>      >> <fisher using plessthan.com> wrote:
>      >>> R 4.2.2 OS X
>      >>>
>      >>> Colleagues
>      >>>
>      >>> A file that I have read includes strings like this:
>      >>> "EVENT ≥ 30 sec" When I include the string in a graphic
>      >>> using: mtext(STRING, …)  it appears as: "EVENT ... 30
>      >>> sec"
>      >>>
>      >>> Is there a simple work-around (short of reformatting all
>      >>> the strings, then using plotmath)?
>      >>>
>      >>> Dennis
>      >>>
>      >>> Dennis Fisher MD P < (The "P Less Than" Company) Phone /
>      >>> Fax: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784) www.PLessThan.com
>      >>>
>      >>> ______________________________________________
>      >>> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and
>      >>> more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>      >>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>      >>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide
>      >>> commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>      >>
>      > Hello,
> 
>      > I had no problems with
> 
>      > X11()
>      > plot(1,1, pch = "")
>      > text(1, 1, "EVENT ≥ 30 sec")
>      > #dev.off()
> 
> Yes, for me too.
> X11() *is*  by default the "X11cairo" device and that works, the
> same as the "Cairo PDF" device that Jeff mentioned above.
> 
> Indeed,
>    cairo_pdf("utf8-ex.pdf")  # works nicely
> 
> whereas  pdf("utf8-ex.pdf") does not {for me, with default font
> families etc}, but rather shows the "..." instead.
> 
> *and* gives warnings during the plot
>    conversion failure on 'EVENT ≥ 30 sec' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for <e2>
>    conversion failure on 'EVENT ≥ 30 sec' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for <89>
>    conversion failure on 'EVENT ≥ 30 sec' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for <a5>
> 
> BTW, a simple one liner for testing is
> 
>     plot(1, type="n", axes=FALSE, main = "EVENT ≥ 30 sec")
> 
> Note that help(pdf)  contains
> 
>     See Also:
> 
>          pdfFonts, pdf.options, embedFonts, Devices, postscript.
> 
>          cairo_pdf and (on macOS only) quartz for other devices that
>          can produce PDF.
> 
>          More details of font families and encodings and especially
>          handling text in a non-Latin-1 encoding and embedding fonts can be
>          found in
> 
>          Paul Murrell and Brian Ripley (2006).  “Non-standard fonts in
>          PostScript and PDF graphics.” _R News_, *6*(2), 41-47.
>          <https://www.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/Rnews_2006-2.pdf>.
> 
> -
> Martin
> 
>      > Hope this helps,
>      > Rui Barradas
Hello,

I can confrim this behavior with cairo_pdf(), it works as expected 
printing "EVENT ≥ 30 sec".
But with pdf() I get an equal sign "EVENT = 30 sec" and no errors.
Full code:



cairo_pdf("~/Temp/cairo_pdf_utf8-ex.pdf")  # works
plot(1,1, pch = "")
text(1, 1, "EVENT ≥ 30 sec")
dev.off()
# null device
#           1

pdf("~/Temp/pdf_utf8-ex.pdf")              # prints "=", no warnings
plot(1,1, pch = "")
text(1, 1, "EVENT ≥ 30 sec")
dev.off()
# null device
#           1

sessionInfo()
# R version 4.2.1 (2022-06-23 ucrt)
# Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
# Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 22621)
#
# Matrix products: default
#
# locale:
# [1] LC_COLLATE=Portuguese_Portugal.utf8  LC_CTYPE=Portuguese_Portugal.utf8
# [3] LC_MONETARY=Portuguese_Portugal.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C
# [5] LC_TIME=Portuguese_Portugal.utf8
#
# attached base packages:
# [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
#
# loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
# [1] compiler_4.2.1
#


Also, nice trick to print the text as plot title, I will remember that 
one-liner.

Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas