From Robert.McGehee at geodecapital.com  Tue Feb  8 21:32:13 2005
From: Robert.McGehee at geodecapital.com (McGehee, Robert)
Date: Tue Feb  8 21:32:28 2005
Subject: [Rd] RE: [R] Windows Printing and Line Widths
Message-ID: <67DCA285A2D7754280D3B8E88EB548020C1ED585@MSGBOSCLB2WIN.DMN1.FMR.COM>

... Moved from R-help ...

Thank you for your suggestion, Professor Ripley. Postscript does seem
like the way to go for printing line widths correctly in Windows.

On Linux I am using a simple dev.print() wrapper (as suggested), with a
pipe to lpr.

However, I had an extremely difficult time getting postscript printing
under windows. 
?postscript recommends the RedMon suite of tools for printing PS files
to printers. I had no trouble installing and using this utility from my
shell, but under R, I observed this odd behavior:

options(printcmd='redpr')
plot(1:10)
dev.print(file = "Rplots.ps", print.it = TRUE)
dev.off()
## Nothing happens!!
q()
## Now it prints

That is, the file only prints when the R session is closed, and not when
the device is closed (contrary to the documentation). After some head
banging, I changed the printcmd options to lpr (the one that comes with
Windows XP), and the PS file printed out correctly after the dev.off()
command. If other people observe this behavior with Windows / RedMon,
then perhaps Windows lpr is the better tool.

Either way, I'm happy to now have beautiful Windows plots again on both
my R screen and R printer.

Thanks,
Robert


-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 12:10 PM
To: McGehee, Robert
Cc: r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] Windows Printing and Line Widths


Those printers AFAIK support postscript.

How are you printing to them on Linux?  I suggest you use dev.print
under 
Windows (it needs some setup, see ?postscript).  That makes more sense 
than going via PDF as the support is all already in R and it is AFAIK
the 
printer's native mode.

We've seen far too many problems with HP Windows printer drivers on 8000

and 4000 series printers.


On Tue, 8 Feb 2005, McGehee, Robert wrote:

> Hi all,
> I develop and print from both Windows and Linux, and am seeing some
> printing inconsistencies first described about a year and a half ago
by
> Andy Liaw (see below). Specifically, the line widths on my windows
plots
> are about 5 times smaller than that on Linux, and my windows printouts
> do not match what my screen looks like. However, if I print to a pdf
> file first, then I can get accurate Windows reproduction of my screen.
I
> was thinking of writing a windows.print() wrapper that creates a
> temporary pdf file and then prints that. However, I wanted to see if a
> better solution now exists to get identical printouts on both Linux
and
> Windows (since Andy's original post), or any comments on what printers
> this does or does not affect.
>
> Thanks,
> Robert
>
> HP Laserjet 8150DN
> HP Color Laserjet 4600DN
> HP Laserjet 4050TN
>
> platform i386-pc-mingw32
> arch     i386
> os       mingw32
> system   i386, mingw32
> status
> major    2
> minor    0.1
> year     2004
> month    11
> day      15
> language R
>
> ---------------------------------
> From: Prof Brian Ripley
> Date: Mon Jun 23 2003 - 23:59:29 EDT
>
>
> What printer driver are you using?
>
>
> I've just tried this and it works exactly as one would expect on my HP
> 970CXi, as well as cut-and-paste into other applications. It also
worked
>
> printing to Acrobat Distiller (although all the lines were thinner
there
>
> than on-screen and on the 970CXi, the ratio was still 1:5).
>
>
> We've been here before, and had to abandon some optimizations because
of
> a
> bug in interpreting Windows metafiles in Word.
>
>
> On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Sundar Dorai-Raj wrote:
>
>
>> Andy,
>> I've experienced the same thing. What's interesting is that printing
>> a plot (CTRL-P) with lwd = 25 makes lines on the hardcopy look like
> lwd
>> = 5. I'm using R1.7.1 on Win2000Pro.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sundar
>>
>> Liaw, Andy wrote:
>>> Dear R-help,
>>>
>>> Has anyone notice the problem that, on Windows (NT and XP), when
> printing a
>>> graph using the "File -> Print..." menu in the graphics window to
> print the
>>> graph, that line width seemed to be ignored in the printed output?
> For
>>> example, if I make a plot with plot(1:10, type="l", lwd=5), it looks
> right
>>> on screen, but when printed out using the menu, it looks like the
> plot was
>>> made with lwd=1. I've had this problem for quite a while (at least
> since
>>> 1.3.x) and still present in 1.7.1. Has anyone else seen this, or
> just me?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> Andy Liaw, PhD
>>> Biometrics Research PO Box 2000, RY33-300
>>> Merck Research Labs Rahway, NJ 07065
>>> mailto:andy_liaw@merck.com <mailto:andy_liaw@merck.com> 732-594-0820
>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
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> ------
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>>>
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>>
>> ______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
> -- 
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> <http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/%7Eripley/>
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>
>
> Robert McGehee
> Geode Capital Management, LLC
> 53 State Street, 5th Floor | Boston, MA | 02109
> Tel: 617/392-8396    Fax:617/476-6389
> mailto:robert.mcgehee@geodecapital.com
>
>
>
> This e-mail, and any attachments hereto, are intended for
us...{{dropped}}
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@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


[Rd] RE: [R] Windows Printing and Line Widths
McGehee, Robert