Pdf file size for very scatter plots

I thought running it through latex will compress the pdf - but this  
post nicely summarizes some options:

http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/e2/help/07/05/17475.html

I personally prefer the pdftk approach* over the ghostscript  
option**  as the latter seems to give me a number of problems on  
Windows XP.

*if you install pdftk (and put it in your search path), after you  
create filename.pdf with pdf(), do
pdftk filename.pdf cat output newfilename.pdf compress
or
pdftk filename.pdf cat output newfilename.pdf compress dont_ask

**if you have ghostview installed (and in your search path),
bitmap("filename.pdf",type="pdfwrite")
plot(...)
dev.off()





----- Original Message ----
From: Nazareno Andrade <nazareno at lsd.ufcg.edu.br>
To: r-help <r-help at r-project.org>
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 12:46:52 PM
Subject: Re: [R] Pdf file size for very scatter plots

Jim,

Thanks for the answer. Using pch="." reduces the file to ~3MB...  
Still large.

I'll look into hexbins, but if I understand it right, it would 'round'
points which are nearby into a same hexagon, right? Couldn't that
result in an inaccurate view of a scatter plot?

Here's the code I'm using:

pdf(); plot(rnorm(1e5), rnorm(1e5), pch = "."); dev.off()

thanks again,
Nazareno

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 12:27 PM, jim holtman <jholtman at gmail.com>  
wrote:

Have you tried using  pch='.'?

Also you might consider using 'hexbin' for creating the scatter plot.

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 12:24 PM, Nazareno Andrade
<nazareno at lsd.ufcg.edu.br> wrote:

Dear all,

I am plotting a scatter plot for a large sample (1e+05 ordered  
pairs).
This produces a large (~5MB) file in a pdf or postscript terminal,  
and
I am wondering whether there are methods for reducing the size of  
the
resulting file so that it is easier to include it in a document. I'd
rather stick with pdf or ps as I am using latex.

thanks,
Nazareno

--
Jim Holtman
Cincinnati, OH
+1 513 646 9390

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?