set different font family for strings in mtext or text?

Hi there,

Is it possible to set different font family for strings in mtext or text?

For example, on windows platform with windows() device:

plot(1:10, type = "n")
text(5,5, "Chinese (English)") #Chinese for Chinese characters

it will give the correct Chinese and English characters with two different 
font family, i.e., English character in default sans family, and Chinese 
character in the system default font family (it seems that the Chinese font 
family can not be set or changed).

However, when using pdf() or postscript(), if setting the font family to 
"Times", then error message will appear:
conversion failure on '...' in 'mbcsToSbcs': dot substituted for...

When set the family "song" (a CJK font family), the English character will be 
displayed in that CJK font family.

I hope to know, is there a mechanism that can be used to set different font 
family for one string, e.g., if one character can not be find in the default 
font family, then search for another font family?

Any suggestions or comments will be really appreciated?

Regards,
Jinsong

See ?par: check the 'family' paramater.
You can select 'family' for each call to mtext or text.

However, mixing families is rather ugly, and there are font families
that cover both English and Chinese.

Note that the main problem with postscript() and pdf() is the limited
support in those languages for non-8-bit character encodings: R cannot
magically remove restrictions of languages designed in the 1970s.
See also http://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/Rnews_2006-2.pdf
(referenced from ?pdf)

Users of other OSes have the option of using cairographics-based devices
(e.g. cairo_pdf), and so will Windows' users as from 2.14.0 (which is in
RC): however, the font flexibility is far less on Windows.

Thank you very much for the quick reply.

On 2011-10-26 18:24, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

See ?par: check the 'family' paramater.
You can select 'family' for each call to mtext or text.

Yes, I can select 'family' for each call to mtext or text. however, when it's 
necessary to put both Chinese and English in one line, I should call text or 
mtext several times with position explicitly. It will be really tedious. The 
following code have been used for this purpose, however, I don't like this 
design:

put.text <- function(x, y, text, family, font, ...) {
  str.n <- length(text)
  sw.n <- numeric(length = str.n+1)
  sw.n[1] <- 0

  if (missing(family)) family <- rep("", str.n)
  if (missing(font)) font <- rep(1, str.n)

  for (i in 1:str.n) sw.n[i+1] <- strwidth(text[i], family = family[i], font 
= font[i])
  sw <- sum(sw.n)
  for (i in 1:str.n)
     text(x+sum(sw.n[1:i]), y, text[i], family = family[i], font = font[i], 
adj = c(0,0.5), ...)
}

## usage
## plot "??(English)" with different font family
## 'song' is a user defined font family for CJK.
pdf()
plot(1:10, type = "n")
put.text(5, 5, c("??", "(English)"), c("song", "Times"))
dev.off()

However, mixing families is rather ugly, and there are font families
that cover both English and Chinese.

Yes, there are some font families that cover both English and Chinese, 
however, in those font families, the English characters are ugly...

Note that the main problem with postscript() and pdf() is the limited
support in those languages for non-8-bit character encodings: R cannot
magically remove restrictions of languages designed in the 1970s.
See also http://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/Rnews_2006-2.pdf
(referenced from ?pdf)

Well, I have read this paper very careful, so I can draw CJK on the plot in 
postscript() and pdf().

Users of other OSes have the option of using cairographics-based devices
(e.g. cairo_pdf), and so will Windows' users as from 2.14.0 (which is in
RC): however, the font flexibility is far less on Windows.

I will try this device. Thanks for the information.

Regards,
Jinsong