From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Tue Feb 26 15:18:26 2008
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:18:26 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [Rd] New version of X11, png and jpeg
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0802251858380.1885@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
References: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0802201933470.25534@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
	<66f3bd910802251055m818e1c2kb0056e729b8e5a11@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.LFD.1.00.0802251858380.1885@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0802261318300.29214@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>

Revision r44621 supports (in a limited way) cairo 1.0 and hence I believe 
vanilla FC5 -- I found what purports to be a vanilla FC5 box and it works 
quite well there.

Two people have reported that the svg(), cairo-pdf() and cairo-ps() 
devices produce blank (but not empty) files.  I was able to confirm that 
on Debian etch (cairo 1.2.4).  They do work on cairo 1.4.14 (F8) and 
better on a 1.5.10 snapshot.

We've got a working version on Mac OS X, but you need to install cairo.

Finally, the quality of the fonts you see will depend on what fonts you 
have installed: if you only have X11 bitmapped fonts, that is what you 
will get (and I am getting on our minimally configured Debian etch 
machine).  Our Fedora installations are mainly using the URW Type 1 fonts 
in the urw-fonts RPM.  One of the alternatives is RH's liberation fonts 
(https://www.redhat.com/promo/fonts/).

On Mon, 25 Feb 2008, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> That call is from Cairo 1.2, so looks like our test FC5 box had a later 
> version of the cairo libraries than the one pkg-config reported.
>
> You should be able to build with --without-cairo until such a time as we can 
> add a suitable configure test.
>
> Thank you for the report.
>
> On Mon, 25 Feb 2008, Roger Peng wrote:
>
>> (Apologies, I meant to 'Reply to all' the first time but forgot).
>> 
>> I built r44608 of R-devel with (I think) cairo support.   At least,
>> that's what the configure script told me.  In addition,
>> 'capabilities("cairo")' is TRUE.  Calling X11(type = "Cairo") gives me
>> the error:
>> 
>> Error in X11() : X11 module cannot be loaded
>> In addition: Warning message:
>> In X11() :
>> unable to load shared library
>> '/home/rpeng/install/R-devel/lib64/R/modules//R_X11.so':
>> /home/rpeng/install/R-devel/lib64/R/modules//R_X11.so: undefined
>> symbol: cairo_image_surface_get_data
>> 
>> 
>> I figured I must be missing a library somewhere, but I'm not sure how
>> to track down which one.  Any thoughts here?
>> 
>> I'm on a FC5 system with:
>> 
>> cairo-devel-1.0.4-1
>> cairo-1.0.4-1
>> cairo-1.0.4-1
>> 
>> and
>> 
>> pango-1.12.4-4
>> pango-devel-1.12.4-4
>> pango-1.12.4-4
>> 
>> Also, I have
>> 
>> [rpeng at audrey R-source]$ pkg-config --modversion pango
>> 1.12.4
>> [rpeng at audrey R-source]$ pkg-config --modversion cairo
>> 1.0.4
>> 
>> -roger
>> 
>> On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
>> <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> R-devel has new versions of the X11(), png() and jpeg() devices on
>>>  Unix-alikes.  The intention is that these are used identically to the
>>>  previous versions (which remain available) but will produce 
>>> higher-quality
>>>  output with more features.
>>>
>>>  Pros:
>>>
>>>  Antialiasing of text and lines (can be turned off) but no blurring of
>>>  fills.
>>>
>>>  Buffering of the X11 display and fast repainting from a backing image.
>>>  (The intention is to emulate the timer-based buffering of the windows()
>>>  device in due course, but not for 2.7.0.)
>>>
>>>  Ability to use translucent colours, including backgrounds, and produce
>>>  partially transparent PNG files.
>>>
>>>  Scalable text, including to sizes like 4.5 pt. This allows more accurate
>>>  sizing on non-standard screen sizes (e.g. my home machine has a 90dpi
>>>  1650x1024 display whereas standard X11 fonts are set up for 75 or 100
>>>  dpi).
>>>
>>>  Full support for UTF-8, so on systems with suitable fonts you can plot in
>>>  many languages on a single figure (and this will work even in non-UTF-8
>>>  locales).  The output should be locale-independent (unlike the current
>>>  devices where even English text is rendered slightly differently in
>>>  Latin-1 and UTF-8 locales).
>>>
>>>  A utility function savePlot() to make a PNG/JPEG/TIFF copy of the current
>>>  plot.
>>>
>>>  The new png() and jpeg() devices do not require an X server to be 
>>> running.
>>>
>>>  Cons:
>>>
>>>  Needs more software installed - cairo, pango and support packages (which
>>>  on all the systems we have looked at are pulled in by the packages 
>>> checked
>>>  for).  You will see something like
>>>
>>>    Additional capabilities:   PNG, JPEG, iconv, MBCS, NLS, cairo
>>>                                                            ^^^^^
>>>  if configure finds the software we are looking for.
>>>
>>>  Slower under some circumstances (although on the test systems much faster
>>>  than packages Cairo and cairoDevice).  This will be particularly true for
>>>  X11() with a slow connection between the machine running R and the X
>>>  server.
>>>
>>>  The additional software might not work correctly.
>>> 
>>>
>>>  The new versions are not currently the default, but can be made so by
>>>  setting X11.options(type="Cairo"), e.g. as a load hook for package
>>>  grDevices.  I am using
>>>
>>>  setHook(packageEvent("grDevices", "onLoad"),
>>>      function(...) {
>>>          grDevices::ps.options(horizontal=FALSE)
>>>          if(getRversion() >= '2.7.0') grDevices::X11.options(type="Cairo")
>>>      })
>>> 
>>>
>>>  Please try these out and let us know how you get on.  As a check, try the
>>>  TestChars() examples in ?points - on one Solaris 10 system a few of the
>>>  symbol font characters were incorrect.  It worked on an FC5 system with
>>>
>>>  auk% pkg-config --modversion pango
>>>  1.12.4
>>>  auk% pkg-config --modversion cairo
>>>  1.0.4
>>>
>>>  so the versions required are not all recent.
>>>
>>>  Although these devices would in principle work on Mac OS X, neither cairo
>>>  nor pango is readily available.  We are working on other versions for
>>>  Mac OS (X11 based on cairo/freetype, png/jpeg based on Quartz).
>>>
>>>  There are also new svg() and tiff() devices.
>>>
>>>  --
>>>  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
>>>
>>>  ______________________________________________
>>>  R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Roger D. Peng  |  http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~rpeng/
>> 
>
> -- 
> 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
>

-- 
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



[Rd] New version of X11, png and jpeg
Prof Brian Ripley