Hello Peter, Thank you, and the R core team, for the new release.
I see that in R 2.11.0 there is now support for rendering of raster (bitmap) images through rasterImage(). I am wondering - can this be used to create a texture/fill-pattern for hist()/barplot() ? (A request made several times throughout the years on the mailing list. For example: http://osdir.com/ml/lang.r.general/2005-07/msg00799.html ) (I am also sending this e-mail to the maintainers of lattice, ggplot2 and gplots in the hope for more perspectives) With much respect, Tal ----------------Contact Details:------------------------------------------------------- Contact me: [email protected] | 972-52-7275845 Read me: www.talgalili.com (Hebrew) | www.biostatistics.co.il (Hebrew) | www.r-statistics.com (English) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 12:01 PM, Peter Dalgaard <[email protected]> wrote: > I've rolled up R-2.11.0.tar.gz a short while ago. This is a development > release which contains a number of new features. > > Also, a number of mostly minor bugs have been fixed. See the full list > of changes below. > > NOTE: The build platform has been changed for this release. Please watch > out extra carefully for anomalies. > > You can get it from > > http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-2/R-2.11.0.tar.gz > > or wait for it to be mirrored at a CRAN site nearer to you. > > Binaries for various platforms will appear in due course. > > For the R Core Team > > Peter Dalgaard > > These are the md5sums for the freshly created files, in case you wish > to check that they are uncorrupted: > > MD5 (AUTHORS) = ac9746b4845ae866661f51cfc99262f5 > MD5 (COPYING) = eb723b61539feef013de476e68b5c50a > MD5 (COPYING.LIB) = a6f89e2100d9b6cdffcea4f398e37343 > MD5 (FAQ) = 5b653442bedab476a4eff7468192fb5f > MD5 (INSTALL) = 70447ae7f2c35233d3065b004aa4f331 > MD5 (NEWS) = 59017734fb8474f98f994c7a5a27f9fb > MD5 (ONEWS) = a8c985af5ad5e9c7e0a9f502d07baeb4 > MD5 (OONEWS) = 4f004de59e24a52d0f500063b4603bcb > MD5 (R-latest.tar.gz) = c6c1e866299f533617750889c729bfb3 > MD5 (README) = 433182754c05c2cf7a04ad0da474a1d0 > MD5 (RESOURCES) = 020479f381d5f9038dcb18708997f5da > MD5 (THANKS) = f2ccf22f3e20ebaa86f8ee5cc6b0f655 > MD5 (R-2/R-2.11.0.tar.gz) = c6c1e866299f533617750889c729bfb3 > > This is the relevant part of the NEWS file: > > CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.11.0 > > > SIGNIFICANT USER-VISIBLE CHANGES > > o Packages must have been installed under R >= 2.10.0, as the > current help system is the only one now supported. > > o A port to 64-bit Windows is now available as well as binary > package repositiories: see the 'R Administration and > Installation Manual'. > > o Argument matching for primitive functions is now done in the > same way as for interpreted functions except for the deliberate > exceptions > > call switch .C .Fortran .Call .External > > all of which use positional matching for their first argument, > and also some internal-use-only primitives. > > o The default device for command-line R at the console on Mac OS X > is now quartz() and not X11(). > > > NEW FEATURES > > o The 'open' modes for connections are now interpreted more > consistently. open = "r" is now equivalent to open = "rt" for > all connections. The default open = "" now means "rt" for all > connections except the compressed file connections gzfile(), > bzfile() and xzfile() for which it means "rb". > > o R CMD INSTALL now uses the internal untar() in package utils: > this ensures that all platforms can install bzip2- and > xz-compressed tarballs. In case this causes problems (as it > has on some Windows file systems when run from Cygwin tools) > it can be overridden by the environment variable > R_INSTALL_TAR: setting this to a modern external tar program > will speed up unpacking of large (tens of Mb or more) > tarballs. > > o help(try.all.packages = TRUE) is much faster (although the > time taken by the OS to find all the packages the first time > it is used can dominate the time). > > o R CMD check has a new option '--timings' to record > per-example timings in file <pkg>.Rcheck/<pkg>-Ex.timings. > > o The TRE library has been updated to version 0.8.0 (minor bugfixes). > > o grep[l], [g]sub and [g]regexpr now work in bytes in an 8-bit > locales if there is no marked UTF-8 input string: this will be > somewhat faster, and for [g]sub() give the result in the > native encoding rather than in UTF-8 (which returns to the > behaviour prior to R 2.10.0). > > o A new argument 'skipCalls' has been added to browser() so that > it can report the original context when called by other > debugging functions. > > o More validity checking of UTF-8 and MBCS strings is done by > agrep() and the regular-expression matching functions. > > o The undocumented restriction on gregexpr() to length(text) > 0 > has been removed. > > o Package tcltk now sends strings to Tcl in UTF-8: this means > that strings with a marked UTF-8 encoding are supported in > non-UTF-8 locales. > > o The graphics engine now supports rendering of raster (bitmap) > images, though not all graphics devices can provide (full) > support. Packages providing graphics devices (e.g., Cairo, > RSvgDevice, cairoDevice) will need to be reinstalled. > > There is also support in the graphics engine for capturing > raster images from graphics devices (again not supported > on all graphics devices). > > o R CMD check now also checks if the package and namespace can > be unloaded: this provides a check of the .Last.lib() and > .onUnload() hook functions (unless --install=fake). > > o prop.table(x) now accepts a one-dimensional table for x. > > o A new function vapply() has been added, based on a suggestion > from Bill Dunlap. It requires that a template for the > function value be specified, and uses it to determine the > output type and to check for consistency in the function > values. > > o The main HTML help page now links to a reformatted copy of > this NEWS file. (Suggested by Henrik Bengtsson.) Package > index files link to the package DESCRIPTION and NEWS files and > a list of demos when using dynamic help. > > o The [ method for class "AsIs" allows the next method to change > the underlying class. (Wish of Jens Oehlschlägel.) > > o write.csv[2] no longer allow 'append' to be changed: as ever, > direct calls to write.table() give more flexibility as well as > more room for error. > > o The index page for HTML help for a package now collapses > multiple signatures for S4 methods into a single entry. > > o The use of '.required' by require() and detach() has been > replaced by '.Depends' which is set from the 'Depends' field > of a package (even in packages with name spaces). By default > detach() prevents such dependencies from being detached: this > can be overridden by the argument 'force'. > > o bquote() has been extended to work on function definitions > (wish of PR#14031). > > o detach() when applied to an object other than a package > returns the environment that has been detached, to parallel > attach(). > > o readline() in non-interactive use returns "" and does not > attempt to read from the 'terminal'. > > o New function file_ext() in package 'tools'. > > o xtfrm() is now primitive and internally generic, as this allows > S4 methods to be set on it without name-space scoping issues. > > There are now "AsIs" and "difftime" methods, and the default > method uses unclass(x) if is.numeric(x) is true (which will be > faster but relies on is.numeric() having been set correctly > for the class). > > o is.numeric(x) is now false for a "difftime" object > (multiplication and division make no sense for such objects). > > o The default method of weighted.mean(x, w) coerces 'w' to be > numeric (aka double); previously only integer weights were > coerced. Zero weights are handled specially so an infinite > value with zero weight does not force an NaN result. > > There is now a "difftime" method. > > o bug.report() now has 'package' and 'lib.loc' arguments to > generate bug reports about packages. When this is used, it > looks for a BugReports field in the package DESCRIPTION file, > which will be assumed to be a URL at which to submit the > report, and otherwise generates an email to the package > maintainer. (Suggested by Barry Rowlingson.) > > o quantile() now has a method for the date-time class "POSIXt", > and types 1 and 3 (which never interpolate) work for Dates and > ordered factors. > > o length(<POSIXlt>) now returns the length of the corresponding > abstract timedate-vector rather than always 9 (the length of the > underlying list structure). (Wish of PR#14073 and PR#10507.) > > o The readline completion backend no longer sorts possible > completions alphabetically (e.g., function argument names) if > R was built with readline >= 6. > > o select.list() gains a 'graphics' argument to allow Windows/Mac > users to choose the text interface. This changes the > behaviour of new.packages(ask=TRUE) to be like > update.packages(ask=TRUE) on those platforms in using a text > menu: use ask="graphics" for a graphical menu. > > o New function chooseBioCmirror() to set the "BioC_mirror" option. > > o The R grammar prevents using the argument 'name' in signatures > of S4 methods for '$' and '$<-', since they will always be > called with a character string value for 'name'. The implicit > S4 generic functions have been changed to reflect this: > packages which included 'name' in the signature of their > methods need to be updated and re-installed. > > o The handling of the 'method' argument of glm() has been > refined following suggestions by Ioannis Kosmidis and Heather > Turner. > > o str() gains a new argument 'list.len' with default 99, limiting the > number of list() items (per level), thanks to suggestions from > David Winsenius. > > o Having formal arguments of an S4 method in a different order > from the generic is now an error (the warning having been > ignored by some package maintainers for a long time). > > o New functions enc2native() and enc2utf8() convert character > vectors with possibly marked encodings to the current locale and > UTF-8 respectively. > > o Unrecognized escapes and embedded nuls in character strings are > now an error, not just a warning. Thus option "warnEscapes" > is no longer needed. rawToChar() now removes trailing nuls > silently, but other embedded nuls become errors. > > o Informational messages about masked objects displayed when a > package is attached are now more compact, using strwrap() > instead of one object per line. > > o print.rle() gains argument 'prefix'. > > o download.file() gains a "curl" method, mainly for use on > platforms which have 'curl' but not 'wget', but also for some > hard-to-access URLs. > > o In Rd, \eqn and \deqn will render in HTML (and convert to text) > upper- and lower-case Greek letters (entered as \alpha ...), > \ldots, \dots, \ge and \le. > > o utf8ToInt() and intToUtf8() now map NA inputs to NA outputs. > > o file() has a new argument 'raw' which may help if it is used > with something other than a regular file, e.g. a character device. > > o New function strtoi(), a wrapper for the C function strtol. > > o as.octmode() and as.hexmode() now allow inputs of length other > than one. > > The format() and print() methods for "octmode" now preserve > names and dimensions (as those for "hexmode" did). > > The format() methods for classes "octmode" and "hexmode" gain > a 'width' argument. > > o seq.int() returns an integer result in some further cases > where seq() does, e.g. seq.int(1L, 9L, by = 2L). > > o Added \subsection{}{} macro to Rd syntax, for subsections > within sections. > > o n-dimensional arrays with dimension names can now be indexed > by an n-column character matrix. The indices are matched > against the dimension names. NA indices are propagated to the > result. Unmatched values and "" are not allowed and result in > an error. > > o interaction(drop=TRUE) uses less memory (related to PR#14121). > > o summary() methods have been added to the "srcref" and > "srcfile" classes, and various encoding issues have been > cleaned up. > > o If option "checkPackageLicense" is set to TRUE (not currently > the default), users will be asked to agree to > non-known-to-be-FOSS package licences at first use. > > o Checking setAs(a,b) methods only gives a message instead of a > warning, when one of a or b is unknown. > > o New function norm() to compute a matrix norm. > norm() and also backsolve() and sample() have implicit S4 generics. > > o Renviron.site and Rprofile.site can have architecture-specific > versions on systems with sub-architectures. > > o R CMD check now (by default) also checks Rd files for > auto-generated content in need of editing, and missing argument > descriptions. > > o aggregate() gains a formula method thanks to a contribution by > Arni Magnusson. The data frame method now allows summary > functions to return arbitrarily many values. > > o path.expand() now propagates NA values rather than converting them > to "NA". > > o file.show() now disallows NA values for file names, headers, and > pager. > > o The 'fuzz' used by seq() and seq.int() has been reduced from > 1e-7 to 1e-10, which should be ample for the double-precision > calculations used in R. It ensures that the fuzz never comes > into play with sequences of integers (wish of PR#14169). > > o The default value of RSiteSearch(restrict=) has been changed > to include vignettes but to exclude R-help. The R-help > archives available have been split, with a new option of > "Rhelp10" for those from 2010. > > o New function rasterImage() in the 'graphics' package for drawing > raster images. > > o stats:::extractAIC.coxph() now omits aliased terms when computing > the degrees of freedom (suggestion of Terry Therneau). > > o cor() and cov() now test for misuse with non-numeric > arguments, such as the non-bug report PR#14207. > > o pchisq(ncp =, log.p = TRUE) is more accurate for probabilities > near one. E.g. pchisq(80, 4, ncp=1, log.p=TRUE). (Maybe what > was meant in PR#14126.) > > o maintainer() has been added, to give convenient access to the > name of the maintainer of a package (contributed by David > Scott). > > o sample() and sample.int() allow zero items to be sampled from > a zero-length input. sample.int() gains a default value > 'size=n' to be more similar to sample(). > > o switch() returned NULL on error (not previously documented on > the help page): it now does so invisibly, analogously to > if-without-else. > > It is now primitive: this means that EXPR is always matched to > the first argument and there is no danger of partial matching > to later named arguments. > > o Primitive functions UseMethod(), attr(), attr<-(), on.exit(), > retracemem() and substitute() now use standard argument > matching (rather than positional matching). This means that > all multi-argument primitives which are not internal now use > standard argument matching except where positional matching is > desirable (as for switch(), call(), .C() ...). > > o All the one-argument primitives now check that any name > supplied for their first argument is a partial match to the > argument name as documented on the help page: this also > applies to replacement functions of two arguments. > > o base::which() uses a new .Internal function when arr.ind is > FALSE resulting in a 10x speedup. Thanks to Patrick Aboyoun > for implementation suggestions. > > o Help conversion to text now uses the first part of \enc{}{} > markup if it is representable in the current output encoding. > On the other hand, conversion to LaTeX with the default > outputEncoding = "ASCII" uses the second part. > > o A new class "listOfMethods" has been introduced to represent > the methods in a methods table, to replace the deprecated > class "MethodsList". > > o any() and all() return early if possible. This may speed up > operations on long vectors. > > o strptime() now accepts "%z" (for the offset from UTC in the > RFC822 format of +/-hhmm). > > o The PCRE library has been updated to version 8.02, a bug-fix > release which also updates tables to Unicode 5.02. > > o Functions which may use a graphical select.list() (including > menu() and install.packages()) now check on a Unix-alike that > Tk can be started (and not just > capabilities("tcltk") && capabilities("X11")). > > o The parser no longer marks strings containing octal or hex > escapes as being in UTF-8 when entered in a UTF-8 locale. > > o On platforms with cairo but not Pango (notably Mac OS X) the > initial default X11() type is set to "Xlib": this avoids > several problems with font selection when done by cairo rather > than Pango (at least on Mac OS X). > > o New arrayInd() such that which(x, arr.ind = TRUE) for an array > 'x' is now equivalent to arrayInd(which(x), dim(x), dimnames(x)). > > > DEPRECATED & DEFUNCT > > o Bundles of packages are defunct. > > o stats::clearNames() is defunct: use unname(). > > o Basic regular expressions are defunct, and strsplit(), grep(), > grepl(), sub(), gsub(), regexpr() and gregexpr() no longer > have an 'extended' argument. > > o methods::trySilent() is defunct. > > o index.search() (which was deprecated in 2.10.0) is no longer > exported and has a different argument list. > > o Use of multiple arguments to return() is now defunct. > > o The use of UseMethod() with more than two arguments is now defunct. > > o In the 'methods' package, the MethodsList metadata objects which > had been superseded by hash tables (environments) since R > 2.8.0 are being phased out. Objects of this class are no > longer assigned or used as metadata by the package. > > getMethods() is now deprecated, with its internal use replaced > by findMethods() and other changes. Creating objects from the > MethodsList class is also deprecated. > > o Parsing strings containing both octal/hex and Unicode escapes > now gives a warning and will become an error in R 2.12.0. > > > INSTALLATION > > o UTF-8 is now used for the reference manual and package > manuals. This requires LaTeX '2005/12/01' or later. > > o configure looks for a POSIX compliant tr, Solaris's > /usr/ucb/tr having been found to cause Rdiff to malfunction. > > o configure is now generated with autoconf-2.65, which works > better on recent systems and on Mac OS X. > > > PACKAGE INSTALLATION > > o Characters in R source which are not translatable to the > current locale are now handled more tolerantly: these will be > converted to hex codes with a warning. Such characters are > only really portable if they appear in comments. > > o R CMD INSTALL now tests that the installed package can be loaded > (and backs out the installation if it cannot): this can be > suppressed by --no-test-load. This avoids installing/updating > a package that cannot be used: common causes of failures to > load are missing/incompatible external software and > missing/broken dependent packages. > > o Package installation on Windows for a package with a src > directory now checks if a DLL is created unless there is a > src/Makefile.win file: this helps catch broken installations > where the toolchain has not reported problems in building the DLL. > (Note: this can be any DLL, not just one named <pkg-name>.dll.) > > > BUG FIXES > > o Using with(), eval() etc with a list with some unnamed > elements now works. (PR#14035) > > o The "quick" dispatch of S4 methods for primitive functions was > not happening, forcing a search each time. (Dispatch for > closures was not affected.) A side effect is that default > values for arguments in a method that do not have defaults in > the generic will now be ignored. > > o Trying to dispatch S4 methods for primitives during the search > for inherited methods slows that search down and potentially > could cause an infinite recursion. An internal switch was > added to turn off all such methods from > findInheritedMethods(). > > o R framework installation (on Mac OS X) would not work properly > if a rogue Resources directory was present at the top level. > Such a non-symlink will now be renamed to Resources.old (and > anything previously named Resources.old removed) as part of > the framework installation process. > > o The checks for conforming S4 method arguments could fail when > the signature of the generic function omitted some of the > formal arguments (in addition to ...). Arguments omitted from > the method definition but conforming (per the documentation) > should now be ignored (treated as "ANY") in dispatching. > > o The computations for S4 method evaluation when '...' was in the > signature could fail, treating '...' as an ordinary symbol. > This has been fixed, for the known cases. > > o Various ar() fitting methods have more protection for singular > fits. > > o callNextMethod now works again with the drop= argument in `[` > > o parse() and parse_Rd() miscounted columns when multibyte UTF-8 > characters were present. > > o Formatting of help pages has had minor improvements: extra > blank lines have been removed from the text format, and empty > package labels removed from HTML. > > o cor(A, B) where A has n x 1 and B a 1-dimensional array > segfaulted or gave an internal error. > (The case cor(B, A) was PR#7116.) > > o cut.POSIXt() applied to a start value after the DST transition > on a DST-change day could give the wrong time for 'breaks' in units > of days or longer. (PR#14208) > > o do_par() UNPROTECTed too early (PR#14214) > > o subassignment x[[....]] <- y didn't check for a zero-length > right hand side, and inserted rubbish value. (PR#14217) > > o fisher.test() no longer gives a P-value *very* slightly > 1, > in some borderline cases. > > o Internal function matchArgs no longer modifies the general > purpose bits of the SEXPs that make up the formals list of R > functions. This fixes an invalid error message that would > occur when a garbage collection triggered a second call to > matchArgs for the same function via a finalizer. > > o gsub() in 2.10.x could fail from stack overflow for extremely > long strings due to temporary data being allocated on the > stack. Also, gsub() with fixed=TRUE is in some circumstances > considerably faster. > > o Several primitives, including attributes(), attr<-() > interactive(), nargs() and proc.time(), did not check that > they were called with the correct number of arguments. > > o A potential race condition in list.files() when other processes > are operating on the directory has been fixed; the code now > dynamically allocates memory for file listings in a single > pass instead of making an initial count pass. > > o mean(x, trim=, na.rm = FALSE) failed to return NA if 'x' > contained missing values. (Reported by Bill Dunlap.) > > o Extreme tail behavior of, pbeta() {and hence pf()}, e.g., > pbeta(x, 3, 2200, lower.tail=FALSE, log.p=TRUE) now returns > finite values instead of jumping to -Inf too early (PR#14230). > > o parse(text=x) misbehaved for objects 'x' that were not coerced > internally to character, notably symbols. (Reported to > R-devel by Bill Dunlap.) > > o The internal C function 'coerceSymbol' now handles coercion to > character, and warns if coercion fails (rather than silently > returning NULL). This allows a name to be given where a > character vector is required in functions which coerce > internally. > > o The interpretation by strptime() of %c was non-standard (not > that it is ever advisable to use locale- and system-specific > input formats). > > o capabilities("X11") now works the same way on Mac OS X as on > other platforms (and as documented: it was always true for R > built with --with-aqua, as the CRAN builds are). > > o The X11() device with cairo but not Pango (notably Mac OS X) > now checks validity of text strings in UTF-8 locales (since > Pango does but cairo it seems does not). > > o read.fwf() misread multi-line records when n was specified. > (PR#14241) > > o all.equal(*, tolerance = e) passes the numeric tolerance also to > the comparison of the attributes. > > o pgamma(0,0), a boundary case, now returns 0, its limit from the > left, rather than the limit from the right. > > o Issuing POST requests to the internal web server could stall > the request under certain circumstances. > > o gzcon( <textConnection> ), an error, no longer damages the > connection (in a way to have it seg.fault). (PR#14237) > > o All the results from hist() now use the nominal 'breaks' not > those adjusted by the numeric 'fuzz": in recent versions the > nominal 'breaks' were reported but the 'density' referred to > the intervals used in the calculation -- which mattered very > slightly for one of the extreme bins. (Based on a report by > Martin Becker.) > > o If xy[z].coords (used internally by many graphics functions) are > given a list as 'x', they now check that the list has suitable > names and give a more informative error message. (PR#13936) > > > > > -- > Peter Dalgaard > Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School > Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark > Phone: (+45)38153501 > Email: [email protected] Priv: [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > [email protected] mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-announce > > ______________________________________________ > [email protected] 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. > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________ [email protected] 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.
