I would look into the code for pairs(). Among other things, it sets and restores par(mfrow=...). I suspect this is the relevant issue, not the use of pairs(). I would try to figure out what state a graphics device is in after resetting par("mfrow"). When I try the following (R 2.6.0 patched, under Windows), I see a line on the plot, but not in a place that corresponds to the axis that were drawn by the 'plot()' command:
> par(mfrow=c(2,2)) > plot(1:2) > par(mfrow=c(1,1)) > lines(1:2,1:2) > (and if you want to be able to set up a new coordinate system on the plotting device to draw on top of the plot left by pairs(), look at par("new") & something like plot(0:1, type='n', axes=F, xlab="")) hope this helps, Tony Plate Oliver Soong wrote: > Hi, > > I posted over at R-help, and didn't get a response, but perhaps that > was the wrong forum for this question. I'm having some confusion over > the coordinate system after using pairs. I'm not interested in the > content of the actual pairs plot, although the number of pairs seems > to matter a bit. I'm purely interested in knowing where subsequent > points will be plotted on the device. However, after using pairs, the > par information (omd, fig, plt, and usr) don't reflect what points > does. For example: > > pairs(iris[1:5]) > par(xpd = NA) > points(0 - 0.01 * 1:100, 0 - 0.01 * 1:100) > points(0 - 0.01 * 1:100, 1 + 0.01 * 1:100) > points(1 + 0.01 * 1:100, 0 - 0.01 * 1:100) > points(1 + 0.01 * 1:100, 1 + 0.01 * 1:100) > par(c("omd", "fig", "plt", "usr")) > > The resulting plot shows that the corners of the are approximately > 0.05 user coordinate units from the boundaries of the plot region. > According to par, though, there is a margin around the plotting region > that is clearly not symmetric and does not correspond to around 0.05 > units. > > If we use pairs(iris[1:2]) and repeat the rest, the corners are now > 0.02 user coordinate units. par provides the same information as > before. > > So: > 1. How do I figure out where coordinates I give to points will display > on the figure? > 2. More generally (for my own understanding), why does the par > information not do what I expect? Do I have some fundamental > misunderstanding of the arrangement of plotting, figure, display, and > margin regions within the device? Is there a bug in pairs and/or par? > > I'm using R 2.5.1, and this behavior occurs on a fresh R console. > > Thanks! > > Oliver > > > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel