This help topic is for R version 1.5.0. For the current version of R, try https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/base/html/pdf.html
pdf {base}R Documentation

PDF Graphics Device

Description

pdf starts the graphics device driver for producing PDF graphics.

Usage

pdf(file = ifelse(onefile, "Rplots.pdf", "Rplot%03d.pdf"),
    width = 6, height = 6, onefile = TRUE, family = "Helvetica",
    encoding, bg, fg, pointsize)

Arguments

file

a character string giving the name of the file.

width, height

the width and height of the graphics region in inches.

onefile

logical: if true (the default) allow multiple figures in one file. If false, generate a file name containing the page number.

family

the font family to be used, one of "AvantGarde", "Bookman", "Courier", "Helvetica", "Helvetica-Narrow", "NewCenturySchoolbook", "Palatino" or "Times".

encoding

the name of an encoding file. Defaults to "ISOLatin1.enc" in the ‘R\_HOME/afm’ directory, which is used if the path does not contain a path separator. An extension ".enc" can be omitted.

pointsize

the default point size to be used.

bg

the default background color to be used.

fg

the default foreground color to be used.

Details

pdf() opens the file file and the PDF commands needed to plot any graphics requested are sent to that file.

See postscript for details of encodings, as the internal code is shared between the drivers. The native PDF encoding is given in file ‘PDFDoc.enc’.

pdf writes uncompressed PDF. It is primarily intended for producing PDF graphics for inclusion in other documents, and PDF-includers such as pdftex are usually able to handle compression.

At present the PDF is fairly simple, with each page being represented as a single stream. The R graphics model does not distinguish graphics objects at the level of the driver interface.

Note

Acrobat Reader does not use the fonts specified but rather emulates them from multiple-master fonts. This can be seen in imprecise centring of characters, for example the multiply and divide signs in Helvetica.

See Also

Devices, postscript

Examples

## Not run: 
## Test function for encodings
TestChars <- function(encoding="ISOLatin1")
{
    pdf(encoding=encoding)
    par(pty="s")
    plot(c(0,15), c(0,15), type="n", xlab="", ylab="")
    title(paste("Centred chars in encoding", encoding))
    grid(15, 15, lty=1)
    for(i in c(32:255)) {
	x <- i 
	y <- i 
	points(x, y, pch=i)
    }
    dev.off()
}
## there will be many warnings.
TestChars("ISOLatin2")
## doesn't view properly in US-spec Acrobat 5.05, but gs7.04 works.
## Lots of characters are not centred.

## End(Not run)

[Package base version 1.5.0 ]