On 1/31/2007 8:49 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote: > On Wed, 31 Jan 2007, Duncan Murdoch wrote: > >> On 1/30/2007 8:50 PM, jtxx000 wrote: >>> Greetings all, >>> PGF is a package for LaTeX which works with both ps >>> and pdf output without any nasty hacks like pictex. >>> Is there any technical reason why there could not be a >>> PGF graphic device for R? If not, I'm going to try to >>> throw one together. Any tips for getting started? >> >> The existing drivers are in the grDevices package. I would start with >> one of those (the picTeX driver would probably be most similar) and go >> from there. Alternatively, start from devNULL.c and fill in the blanks. > > Please don't start from pictex (it is only half implemented, including no > real font metrics). If you need Type1 fonts, I suggest you start from the > postscript/PDF driver. > >> Someone else may be able to offer advice about whether you should be >> targetting this to be your own package, or for inclusion in the R >> source. In the past it's been impossible to create a driver in a >> package, and there's been talk about adding enough to the API to allow >> this, but I don't know whether that's in place yet. > > There are several devices in packages, and this has been possible since at > least R 1.4.0 (from 2001). There used to be gtkDevice (still on CRAN, but > old Gtk), GNOMEdevice (never finished) and an SVG driver > (http://www.darkridge.com/~jake/RSvg/), and there are now cairoDevice on > CRAN, the quartz device in the R.app front-end, and others.
Yes, I must have been thinking about connections. Just for the record, is it possible to create a new connection type in a package? Duncan Murdoch > > Paul Murrell used to have a list of known graphics devices, but I was > unable to locate it quickly. > > I've written several devices, including pdf(), xfig() and versions of > png() etc. The hard part is getting text and font metrics working: also > nowadays you need to be prepared to handle UTF-8 text and CJK locales, > which many graphic systems are not up to speed on (including postscript, > pdf and latex). > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
