Plot Fonts in Windows vs Mac OSX

[Sean Carmody]

I have been plotting the same charts using png on a Windows machine
and on a Mac OSX and the quality of the resulting images, particularly
in relation to the fonts, look far superior in the plots produced on
the Mac. Is there any way I can enhance the quality of the plots
produced on the Windows machine? I have also tried using win.metafile
on the Windows machine and the quality looks the same as the png. The
obvious solution would be to just use the Mac, but that's not an
option in the office!

I have been searching the archives on this topic to no avail (although
I can vouch for the perspicacity of my choice of search terms), so any
help would be greatly appreciated!

Regards,
Sean.
--
Sean Carmody

The Stubborn Mule
http://www.stubbornmule.net
http://twitter.com/seancarmody

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[Winston Chang-2]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 7:11 PM, Sean Carmody <seancarmody@...> wrote:

> I have been plotting the same charts using png on a Windows machine
> and on a Mac OSX and the quality of the resulting images, particularly
> in relation to the fonts, look far superior in the plots produced on
> the Mac. Is there any way I can enhance the quality of the plots
> produced on the Windows machine? I have also tried using win.metafile
> on the Windows machine and the quality looks the same as the png. The
> obvious solution would be to just use the Mac, but that's not an
> option in the office!
>
> I have been searching the archives on this topic to no avail (although
> I can vouch for the perspicacity of my choice of search terms), so any
> help would be greatly appreciated!
>

Your issue probably has to do with antialiasing. See number 8 in this list:
http://blog.revolution-computing.com/2009/01/10-tips-for-making-your-r-graphics-look-their-best.html

You can supposedly work around it using the Cairo package and CairoPNG()
instead of png(), as shown here:
http://www.mailund.dk/index.php/2009/01/25/antialias-plotting-in-r-using-cairo/

However, in my experience, the fonts don't work right in Windows XP with
CairoPNG. You can see it in this chart I made using different rendering
methods on different platforms (scroll down to CairoPNG).
http://stdout.org/~winston/X/r-antialias/pch.html

I posted about a related issue a little while back but never got a
response.... hopefully someone else will be able to explain how to make it
work!

-Winston

        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

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[Sean Carmody]

Thanks for the reponse Winston. Your chart
(http://stdout.org/~winston/X/r-antialias/pch.html) illustrates my
problem perfectly. I did experiment with Cairo, with no success in
improving the display. In the blog post you linked to, the following
comment appeared:

"If you don't have anti-aliasing on your system (and can't recompile R
to enable it), you can use the poor-man's anti-aliasing trick:
generate the graph in double the resolution, and display it at half
the size."

Does this mean that the standard Windows binary for R is not compiled
with anti-aliasing enabled? Also, I have tried the trick of using
larger graphics reduced in the browser, but I have found that the
results look a little blurry. I am yet to produce a png plot on
Windows that looks anything like as good as the ones produced on the
Mac.

Regards,
Sean.

On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 1:35 AM, Winston
Chang<winstonchang2008@...> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 7:11 PM, Sean Carmody <seancarmody@...> wrote:
>>
>> I have been plotting the same charts using png on a Windows machine
>> and on a Mac OSX and the quality of the resulting images, particularly
>> in relation to the fonts, look far superior in the plots produced on
>> the Mac. Is there any way I can enhance the quality of the plots
>> produced on the Windows machine? I have also tried using win.metafile
>> on the Windows machine and the quality looks the same as the png. The
>> obvious solution would be to just use the Mac, but that's not an
>> option in the office!
>>
>> I have been searching the archives on this topic to no avail (although
>> I can vouch for the perspicacity of my choice of search terms), so any
>> help would be greatly appreciated!
>
> Your issue probably has to do with antialiasing. See number 8 in this list:
> http://blog.revolution-computing.com/2009/01/10-tips-for-making-your-r-graphics-look-their-best.html
> You can supposedly work around it using the Cairo package and CairoPNG()
> instead of png(), as shown here:
> http://www.mailund.dk/index.php/2009/01/25/antialias-plotting-in-r-using-cairo/
>
> However, in my experience, the fonts don't work right in Windows XP with
> CairoPNG. You can see it in this chart I made using different rendering
> methods on different platforms (scroll down to CairoPNG).
> http://stdout.org/~winston/X/r-antialias/pch.html
> I posted about a related issue a little while back but never got a
> response.... hopefully someone else will be able to explain how to make it
> work!
> -Winston
>

--
Sean Carmody

The Stubborn Mule
http://www.stubbornmule.net
http://twitter.com/seancarmody

______________________________________________
R-help@... mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.