Re: [R] R: Including R plots in a Microsoft Word document

Fri, 20 Feb 2004 12:34:58 -0800

I have wrestled with this problem a lot. I use Linux, coauthors use Windows, and the eps files I make from R don't work with MS Word. Well, the don't ever have "previews" and they sometimes won't print at all when I use CrossOver Office with MS Office 2000 in Linux. My coauthor says he can often wrestle my eps files into word on his system with Office 2003. People keep telling me to use gsview to insert the preview panes into eps files, and that does work, but more than one half of the time my system creates eps files that look significantly worse than the originals. Sometimes it inserts a blank page at the top of the eps or it reshapes a figure. I don't care enough about MS to try to track that down. It just pisses me off.


As a result, I think the answer is more complicated than other people make it seem.

I don't think it does any good to output a pdf file because, as I learned yesterday, MS Word users can't import a pdf file into a doc.

Clearly, if you are an MS windows user of R, you can save graphics in the windows meta format (wmf) (or is it enhanced meta format, emf?). That will go more or less seamlessly into Word. If you have a chance to boot into Windows, and you really must make an image that works well with Word, then you should boot into Windows, run your R in there and make the wmf file.

If you are a Linux/Unix user, and you are too proud to use Windows, the problem is much more difficult to deal with.

If you are ABSOLUTELY SURE that your image does not need to be resized in any way, you could output from R into a picture type format, such as png. As long as the image does not need to resized in any way, that will be fine. If it is resized, then all bets are off.

I find that the R output to the xfig format is quite good and I can edit files in xfig. You can edit those files, add text, so its very very handy. So right now I'm looking for a good bridge from xfig format to Word. But I just started investigating that.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

On Fri, Feb 20, 2004 at 05:54:33PM +0200, Mahmoud K. Okasha wrote:


Greetings List,

I am conducting some large simulations using R. As a result, I get many plots but I'm having some trouble with including some of them in a Microsoft Word document. Can any one tell me the easiest method of having copies of the R-graphs in the Word documents?



R can produce at least PostScript, PDF, png, jpeg/jpg

see:

        help(postscript)
        help(pdf)
        help(png)
        help(jpeg)

I don't use word, for me the PostScript format (more precisely Encapsulated
PostScript/.eps) is the best/more easy/powerful format if you don't have thousands of
points or lines :-)

por instance, to print a simple plot:

postscript(file="somefile.eps");

plot(whatever);

dev.off(); <<---- Important

other formats are similar

regards

Ulisses


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