thanks for the rapid response. yes, in x11 your suggestion works perfectly. i have never thought of the asterisk as being a superscript... to me it has always been the "mulitply" sign which is centred. thanks for the education!
however, my plot is being sent to postscript, which i guess does not support unicode because i get a whole flurry of warnings and the text on the plot is not correct. Warning messages: 1: In title(...) : font metrics unknown for Unicode character U+2217 2: In title(...) : font metrics unknown for Unicode character U+2217 3: In title(...) : font metrics unknown for Unicode character U+2217 4: In title(...) : font metrics unknown for Unicode character U+2217 5: In title(...) : conversion failure on '∗' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for <e2> 6: In title(...) : conversion failure on '∗' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for <88> 7: In title(...) : conversion failure on '∗' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for <97> 8: In title(...) : conversion failure on '∗' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for <e2> 9: In title(...) : conversion failure on '∗' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for <88> 10: In title(...) : conversion failure on '∗' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for <97> the plotting command is plot(NA, xlim = c(0,10), ylim = c(0, 20), ylab = expression(paste(symbol("\341"), italic(n), symbol("\361"))), xlab = expression(paste(italic(n)["\u2217"]))) i am just using the "plain vanilla" font (no changes). it is being run on R version 2.11.1 (2010-05-31) under ubuntu. my locale is LC_CTYPE=en_ZA.utf8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_ZA.utf8;LC_COLLATE=en_ZA.utf8;LC_MONETARY=C;LC_MESSAGES=en_ZA.utf8;LC_PAPER=en_ZA.utf8;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_ZA.utf8;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C -- Andrew B. Collier Physicist Waves and Space Plasmas Group Hermanus Magnetic Observatory Honorary Senior Lecturer tel: +27 31 2601157 Space Physics Research Institute fax: +27 31 2607795 University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa gsm: +27 83 3813655 On Fri, 2011-01-28 at 09:48 +0000, Prof Brian Ripley wrote: > On Fri, 28 Jan 2011, Andrew Collier wrote: > > > hi, > > > > i am trying to label a plot axis with the equivalent of the latex $n_*$. > > i initially tried > > > > expression(paste(italic(n)["*"])) > > > > but this made the * absolutely tiny and centred about midway wrt the n. > > then > > > > expression(paste(italic(n)[textstyle("*")])) > > > > made the * about the right size but now it looks more like a superscript > > than a subscript. > > > > does anyone have an idea of how to get the * to the "right" subscript > > position (ie. somewhere near the baseline of the n)? thanks! > > I think these *are* correct: remember that an asterisk is a > superscript. However, what you see depends on the graphics device and > font you used, and you have not told us (pace the posting guide). If > your OS and device support Unicode, try \u2217: > > expression(paste(italic(n)["\u2217"])) > > looks about right to me (X11() on Linux). > > > best regards, > > andrew. > > > > -- > > Andrew B. Collier > > > > Physicist > > Waves and Space Plasmas Group > > Hermanus Magnetic Observatory > > > > Honorary Senior Lecturer tel: +27 31 2601157 > > Space Physics Research Institute fax: +27 31 2607795 > > University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa gsm: +27 83 3813655 > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list 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.