From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Wed May 21 08:28:30 2003
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Wed May 21 08:29:14 2003
Subject: [Rd] axis() default values for "lty", "lwd", and "col"
In-Reply-To: <200305202245.PAA15730@hivnet.ubc.ca>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0305210718180.28736-100000@gannet.stats>

I believe this to be deliberate.  If I do

par(lty=2,lwd=3,col="blue")
plot(1:10)

I do not want the axes to be thick, dotted and blue, with black labels.
(It is also I suspect deliberate that

plot(1:10,lty=2,lwd=3,col="blue")

does not pass any of those parameters on to axis().)

You say you made the labels bigger: to do that you needed to set cex.axis 
and cex.main, not cex.

I'm afraid this change would break a lot of existing code.  I am aware 
that S-PLUS does this (with blue labels too), and I have always found it
irritating to have to work around it.


On Tue, 20 May 2003, Jerome Asselin wrote:

> I would like to recommend a minor modification in axis() which I believe 
> can simplify the making of plots for publications. I am trying to define 
> default values for par() in order to make labels bigger and lines thicker, 
> so that the resulting plots look good when resized for publication 
> purposes. I ran into the following problem...
> 
> axis() does not use par() values as default for "lty", "lwd", and "col". 
> Here is an example.
> 
> par(lty=2,lwd=3,col="blue")
> plot(1,1,bty="n",axes=F)
> axis(1)
> axis(2)
> 
> Because axis() doesn't use the par() values, I have to explicitely define 
> the parameters "lty", "lwd", and "col" in my axis() calls. It would make 
> sense if axis() used the par() values by default.
> 
> Hence, I recommend this simple fix in the axis() function([...]) statement 
> in order to have axis() read the par() values for "lty", "lwd", and "col".
> 
> axis <- 
> function (side, at = NULL, labels = TRUE, tick = TRUE, line = NA,
>     pos = NA, outer = FALSE, font = NA, vfont = NULL, lty = par("lty"),
>     lwd = par("lwd"), col = par("col"), ...)
> { [...] }
> 
> I use R1.7.0 on Red Hat Linux 7.2.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Jerome Asselin
> 
> 

-- 
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] axis() default values for "lty", "lwd", and "col"
Prof Brian Ripley