R plot and graphics fonts on Quartz
On Sat, 21 May 2011, Simon Urbanek wrote:
Carlo, On May 21, 2011, at 9:10 AM, Carlo Tambuatco wrote:
This question has probably been asked to death already, I don't know yet...but when plotting using the Quartz framework on OS X, labels do not show up unless the sans font family is selected beforehand.
It usually indicates a problem in your fonts - broken or duplicate fonts. Often going to the Font Book and checking for duplicate or invalid fonts (in particular Arial here) solves the issue.
My question is, how do you permanently change the default fonts for plots to "sans"? I tried changing the quartz options in the preferences pane of the R.app application, but the option to change font families under quartz is not selectable.
The default is hard-coded in Quartz to Arial, there is no provision to change it. (The default has historic reasons since the "normal" default Helvetica was incomplete in older OS X versions).
Is there a way to maybe change the fonts.conf file located in the fonts folder in the RHOME folder?
No, Quartz uses Apple's font frameworks, not FontConfig. However, fixing the font issue in your system should be the more preferable solution.
Basically, I want the default fonts set to sans under quartz to that axis labels show up properly.
You can simply use par(family="sans") to do that, but, again, fixing your font setup will likely have more lasting effect.
Only in base graphics for the current device. Calling quartz.options() is preferable (and can be done in startup files). But why are we helping someone who cannot be bothered to read the help page or the list archives ....
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595