Defaults for postscript()
On 12/6/07, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
The defaults for postscript() paper = "default" onefile = TRUE horizontal = TRUE (it seems) date from the days when people used to used this to send plots directly to a postscript printer via print.it=TRUE. I haven't done that for years, and it seems that our current generation of students don't even know the concept. It seems 'horizontal = TRUE' is particularly difficult to grasp. Given that I suspect almost all uses of postscript() are to produce plots to be viewed on-screen or incorporated into another document, a more appropriate set of defaults would be width = 7, height = 7 paper = "special" onefile = FALSE horizontal = FALSE which would have the advantage of using the same default aspect ratio for plots as all (?) other R graphics devices. Does anyone see a reason not to change the defaults?
I'm not so sure about the 'onefile' change. Scripts with multiple
plots run in batch mode will end up with multiple files; I prefer the
current behaviour. I also have test scripts in packages that go
postscript("something.ps")
<many examples>
dev.off()
Unless I change all these to have onefile=TRUE, I'll end up only with
the last plot available after the tests are run.
-Deepayan