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postscript problems (landscape orientation)

8 messages · Zeljko Vrba, Brian Ripley, Peter Dalgaard +3 more

#
I use the following function to export some figures to .eps:

p.eps <- function(p, fname, title = NULL, width, height)
{
  postscript(file=fname, onefile=FALSE, paper="special",
             width=width, height=height, horizontal=FALSE)
  print(p + opts(title = title))
  dev.off()
}

Whenever I have a page consisting of *only* figures exported in this way,
Acrobat Reader shows them in landscape.  If the figures are mixed with
text, the page retains its portrait orientation.

Any ideas on what's going wrong?
#
On Thu, 21 May 2009, Zeljko Vrba wrote:

            
Using Acrobat Reader to view PostScript!  It is a PDF viewer.

Acrobat Distiller has an auto-rotation option (on by default) when 
converting PostScript to PDF, which ghostscript later copied.  I 
suspect you need to track down where conversion to PDF is happening 
and disable auto-rotation.
Note:

      If you see problems with postscript output, do remember that the
      problem is much more likely to be in your viewer than in R.  Try
      another viewer if possible.

What happened when you followed that request?
#
On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 12:32:28PM +0100, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
Ah, sorry, I explicitly convert the PS with ghostscript's ps2pdf.
Thanks, I'll search for auto-rotation.
People got printed pages in strange orientations.
#
Zeljko Vrba wrote:
I think the trick is

jade:~/> env | grep GS_
GS_OPTIONS=-dAutoRotatePages=/None

which I still have on my work login. However, I almost never use PS 
these days since it is easier just to create the plot files with the 
pdf() device.

  
    
#
On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 02:14:01PM +0200, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
Thanks, I found that myself.  However, when using ps2pdf from Miktex 2.7, I
get the following error:

Unrecoverable error: typecheck in .putdeviceprops

I will try to manually invoke gs or, eventually, just use Distiller.
Ah, now I remember why I don't use pdflatex: when you re-create the document,
the viewer gets _very_ confused, so I have to close and reopen the file and go
to the page I was viewing.  When I recreate postscript and turn on "Watch file"
in ghostview, I get automatic and quick previews of my work.
#
On Thu, 21 May 2009, Zeljko Vrba wrote:

            
Well most people deal with that problem by not using Acrobat to read .pdf 
files. On linux you can use evince or xpdf. On windows just use gsview32. 
Those readers don't lock the .pdf.

I am with Peter and generally go straight to pdf these days. The only 
reason for going through postscript is if you want to use psfrag.

David Scott



_________________________________________________________________
David Scott	Department of Statistics
 		The University of Auckland, PB 92019
 		Auckland 1142,    NEW ZEALAND
Phone: +64 9 923 5055, or +64 9 373 7599 ext 85055
Email:	d.scott at auckland.ac.nz,  Fax: +64 9 373 7018

Graduate Officer, Department of Statistics
Director of Consulting, Department of Statistics
#
On 21-May-09 23:02:28, David Scott wrote:
Going off at a tangent to the original query, I would say that
this is too limited a view! For one thing, PostScript (in its
Encasulated manifestation) is readily imported and re-scalable
by software which does not import PFF. Also, PS is an editable
plain-text file (even though there may be chunks in hexadecimal
for some graphics -- but it's still ASCII). One thing which I
quite often do is edit the "%%BoundingBox: " line to improve the
framing of the graphic -- and viewing it in ghostscript with
"watch" mode on as one edits, one can easily adjust things to
a satisfactory visual effect.

If you know what you are doing, you can if you wish move things
around, or add or delete things (especially bits of text) by
using any plain-text editor on the PostScript file.

Finally (though this may be a symptom of serious masochsim on
my part), if I download a PDF in which the author has plotted
the data, after I "print to file" in PostScript from Acrobat
Reader I can usually obtain a very close approximation to the
original data values by extracting the PS coordinates of the
plotted points (and axis tick-marks) from the PostScript file.

"The only reason for going through postscript is if you want
to use psfrag" -- or psnup and/or psbook or ... 

Ted.


--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 22-May-09                                       Time: 00:31:32
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
#
On May 21, 2009, at 6:31 PM, Ted Harding wrote:

            
PSTricks (http://www.tug.org/PSTricks/), which I use for creating flow  
chart types of figures, such as subject disposition charts in clinical  
trials....in Sweave, I can then fill in text labels in the various  
boxes using \Sexpr with counts, etc.

Examples of use here:

   http://www.tug.org/PSTricks/main.cgi?file=examples

On OSX I find that OSX' Preview works quite well in place of Adobe  
Reader, save for certain animations in PDF files. Also, for those  
still reading this thread and are on OSX, if you are not aware, there  
are additional plugins for QuickLook for EPS files and other such  
things:

   http://www.quicklookplugins.com/

HTH,

Marc Schwartz