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.ps and .pdf page size differences in FC vs. Debian

3 messages · Clint Harshaw, Brian Ripley

Clint Harshaw
# 
R version: 2.0.0
OS: Fedora Core 1

When I'm using Fedora Core 1, Rplots.ps (and subsequent Rplots.pdf 
created after using ps2pdf Rplots.ps) which are created from the command 
line execution of R are too large to fit on a US Letter sized page when 
printed. The same code will produce a US letter sized page when I'm on 
my Debian Sid box. Both boxes are connected to the same shared printer, 
and both are configured in CUPS to use US Letter paper size. When I 
posted a question to the FC folks, the consensus was there was a 
configuration that needed to be done in R to set the proper page for 
graphics exported.

I've google'd for a solution and came up with a check for a locale 
variable in /etc/sysconfig/i18n to be set to the same as for the lang 
variable. I tried that, and the results were still incorrectly sized.

Three sample graphs of the problem can be seen at this url:

http://penguinsolutions.org/math108/Rexamples/Rplots.pdf

Notice how the graph extends beyond the paper on the right side of each 
page.

The command I am running from the terminal is:

R <baseballsalary.R >output --vanilla -q

I then read about postscript() in the documentation, so I found this 
sequence to be successful:

 > postscript("testthis.ps", paper='letter')
[...run all my same R code here...]
 > dev.off()
 > q()

and then run ps2pdf testthis.ps to create the plots as I intended on US 
letter:

http://penguinsolutions.org/math108/Rexamples/testthis.pdf

Notice that the graphs do not extend beyond the edge of US letter paper 
on these plots.

How do I set (in Fedora Core 1) the paper size for R to US letter, so I 
can run my commands R <baseballsalary.R >output --vanilla -q from the 
terminal?

Thanks very much,
Clint
Clint Harshaw
#
Clint Harshaw wrote:
> R version: 2.0.0
 > OS: Fedora Core 1

[...]

 > How do I set (in Fedora Core 1) the paper size for R to US letter, so 
I can run my commands R <baseballsalary.R >output --vanilla -q from the 
terminal?


About 15 minutes after I sent this question in to the list, I found some 
help at this url:

http://www.ku.edu/~pauljohn/R/Rtips.html#5.4

So I tried including options(pagesize="letter") and the result properly 
fit on US Letter paper.

But I would still like to learn how to set a configuration parameter for 
R, so that R code I write will behave the same regardless of my running 
it on my Debian box or my FC1 box.

Thanks,
Clint
Brian Ripley
# 
This *is* in the R-admin manual that the INSTALL file asks you to read, 
and also in configure --help.  There is even an loud hint for `North 
American readers'.  If you have not read that, you need to.

At this stage, go to R_HOME/etc/Renviron and change the default for
R_PAPERSIZE to one of the values stated in the manual.
On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Clint Harshaw wrote: