This help topic is for R version 2.9.0. For the current version of R, try https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/grDevices/html/cairo.html
cairo {grDevices}R Documentation

Cairo-based SVG, PDF and PostScript Graphics Devices

Description

Graphics devices for SVG, PDF and PostScript graphics files.

Usage

svg(filename = if(onefile) "Rplots.svg" else "Rplot%03d.svg",
    width = 7, height = 7, pointsize = 12,
    onefile = FALSE, bg = "white",
    antialias = c("default", "none", "gray", "subpixel"))

cairo_pdf(filename = if(onefile) "Rplots.pdf" else "Rplot%03d.pdf",
          width = 7, height = 7, pointsize = 12,
          onefile = FALSE, bg = "white",
          antialias = c("default", "none", "gray", "subpixel"))

cairo_ps(filename = if(onefile) "Rplots.ps" else "Rplot%03d.ps",
         width = 7, height = 7, pointsize = 12,
         onefile = FALSE, bg = "white",
         antialias = c("default", "none", "gray", "subpixel"))

Arguments

filename

the name of the output file. The page number is substituted if a C integer format is included in the character string, as in the default. (The result must be less than PATH_MAX characters long, and may be truncated if not. See postscript for further details.) Tilde expansion is performed where supported by the platform.

width

the width of the device in inches.

height

the height of the device in inches.

pointsize

the default pointsize of plotted text (in big points).

onefile

should all plots appear in one file or in separate files?

bg

the initial background colour: can be overridden by setting par("bg").

antialias

string, the type of anti-aliasing (if any) to be used; defaults to "default", see X11.

Details

SVG (Scalar Vector Graphics) is a W3C standard for vector graphics. See http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/. The output is SVG version 1.1 for onefile = FALSE (the default), otherwise SVG 1.2. (Very few SVG viewers are capable of displaying multi-page SVG files.)

Note that unlike postscript and pdf, cairo_pdf and cairo_ps sometimes record bitmaps and not vector graphics: a resolution of 72dpi is used. On the other hand, they can (on suitable platforms) include a much wider range of UTF-8 glyphs, and embed the fonts used. They are somewhat experimental.

R can be compiled without support for any of these devices: this will be reported if you attempt to use them on a system where they are not supported. They all require cairo version 1.2 or later.

If you plot more than one page on one of these devices and do not include something like %d for the sequence number in file (or set onefile=TRUE) the file will contain the last page plotted.

The cairo_ps output is not yet encapsulated (that is coming in cairo 1.6).

There is full support of transparency, but using this is one of the things liable to trigger bitmap output (and will always do so for cairo_ps).

Value

A plot device is opened: nothing is returned to the R interpreter.

Conventions

This section describes the implementation of the conventions for graphics devices set out in the “R Internals Manual”.

See Also

Devices, dev.print, pdf, postscript

capabilities to see if cairo is supported.


[Package grDevices version 2.9.0 ]