trellis.device in .First (PR#6812)
On Friday 23 April 2004 03:23, Martin Maechler wrote:
"BDR" == Prof Brian Ripley <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk>
on Fri, 23 Apr 2004 08:21:34 +0100 (BST) writes:
<........>
BDR> It is a matter for discussion (with the lattice
BDR> maintainer) whether trellis.device should help you out
BDR> here by importing the devices from package graphics. I
BDR> think adding (conditionalized on the platform)
BDR> importFrom(graphics, windows, postscript, pdf, pictex,
BDR> win.metafile, win.print, png, jpeg, bmp, xfig,
bitmap)
BDR> to its NAMESPACE might be worth considering.
BDR> Alternatively, device.call <- get(device) could be put
BDR> in a try call, followed by a try on
BDR> getFromNamespace("graphics", device).
That's a very good idea, I'd support quite a bit.
I think I would go with the alternative approach
(where you probably meant to say device <- getOption("device")
first?),
(yes, device is an argument to trellis.device that defaults to
getOption("device"))
since the importFrom(..) approach leeds to a somewhat
tedious maintenance effort to keep up the list of available devices
for the different platforms (For MacOS X one has to include quartz()
only in the situations where it's available) where as Deepayan (the
lattice maintainer) could rely on getOption("device") to be ok
{and as you proposed would be on guard using try() or its newer
siblings}.
That sounds like a good argument to go with the second approach. Looks like I would need importFrom(utils, getFromNamespace) for that, right ? I'll release an updated version over the weekend. Deepayan