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PICT output?

2 messages · Patrick Connolly, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

Original
Patrick Connolly
# 
According to "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky":
|>
|> On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Greg Trafton wrote:
|> 
|> > hi, all.  I use R on a unix (linux) box and am quite happy with it.
|> > However, sometimes I need to create a graph that needs to be used with
|> > Microsoft Word or Powerpoint (ug).  I can create a png or jpeg format
|> > picture, but the text look pretty crummy because jpeg is bitmapped.  I
|> > can also create a PS/EPS version (my preference), but then it doesn't
|> > display properly in word or powerpoint (but it prints OK).
|> >
|> > I guess I have two questions:
|> >   1) Are there any plans for R to output a PICT format?  (which would
|> > solve this problem, I think, since PICT can be read by word/powerpoint
|> > and is not bitmapped).
|> >   2) Is there a way to get an R plot to come out looking good in
|> > powerpoint or word
|> >
|> > thanks for any suggestions!
|> 
|> I've crossed the same bridge; here's what I do:
|> 
|> I have both R for Windows and R for Linux. Since you have Word and
|> PowerPoint, I assume you have Windows :-). I do the analysis on the Linux box
|> and plot "png" files. They are fine for display, but they don't print very well.

It's not necessary to resort to using Windows.  You can improve the
printing quality of a png file by using the bitmap function, and
increasing the res from the default 72 to something like 200.  Your
png file will look fine in PowerPoint.  (It will look huge if you try
to view it in a file viewer, though).  

Another down side is that the type of compression is quite processor
intensive which can make it slow to appear in PowerPoint.  That might
be reason to use WMF instead.

best

Patrick
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
# 
In fact, I am doing the Linux "png" output using "bitmap", "png16",
actually, with a resolution of 600 dpi. They look great on the screen, but
the Windows printer drivers translate them to something grainy and not at
all attractive. My recollection is that the biggest ones are about 90 KBytes
each at this resolution, and 1/4 that at 300 dpi. And yes, the *Linux*
viewers, at least the built-in ones, don't reproduce them as a single page
but just a small chunk of a page; you have to use a viewer with scrollbars
and zoom capability. That's not a problem for this application, because the
person viewing the pictures will *always* have a Windows system.

I discussed these issues a while back. My original design created ".eps"
output files, but I couldn't insert them as pictures in a Word document. So
I tried *all* the other possibilities on Linux before settling on "png" as
the most portable. If Linux R had ".emf" output, I would use that. But it
doesn't, and given my time constraints I did not have the option of
implementing a driver, and even if I did, it would remain proprietary to my
employer, and would not be contributable to the R community as a result.
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, Chief Scientist, Borasky Research
http://www.borasky-research.net  http://www.aracnet.com/~znmeb
mailto:znmeb at borasky-research.com  mailto:znmeb at aracnet.com

If there's nothing to astrology, how come so many famous men were born on
holidays?

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