Postscript and Adobe PDF Setup for 35mm Slides and Other Formats

Description

The ps.slide function has nice defaults to create postscript images with larger font, thicker lines, and better axis labeling. These images can be used to make nice slides. There is an option to view the constructed postscript file using ghostview, and an option to initiate a background process to convert the postscript file to a PC Paintbrush .pcx file for importing into various PC presentation graphics packages although with a significant loss in resolution. This option assumes you have installed various public-domain unix image conversion programs. You can preview .pcx files using e.g. xli file.pcx &. Specify type=1 to make nice fullsize graphs or type=3 for making 5 x 7" landscape graphs using 14-point type (useful for submitting to journals). type=2 (the default) is for color 35mm slides. Use type=4 to make nice black and white overhead projection transparancies (portrait mode). This uses line thickness 4, pointsize 14, height 8, width 7. For type=3, numbers on the y-axis are written horizontally (las defaults to 1 for type=3).

ps.slide calls mgp.axis.labels in Hmisc set up axis-specific defaults for the 2nd mgp graphical parameter. See Overview for Hmisc for help. This is only used automatically for select high-level graphics functions in Hmisc and Design, as S-Plus only supports a single distance between tick marks and tick mark labels using par, and when las=1 a larger distance is needed for the y-axis.

See the body of the function for type-specific default values for many of the parameters. This function has not been tested for color output on Windows systems.

setps is a function that makes small postscript plots with minimal surrounding white space, suitable for inclusion in books and reports. Internally setps uses (and defines) the psfig function by Antonio Possolo (antonio@atc.boeing.com). setps is especially good for including plots in LaTeX. setps creates a temporary function in the session database that when invoked will convert a completed postscript graphics file to a Adobe Acrobat .pdf if you have Ghostscript installed and in your path (so that the gs command is available in UNIX or gswin32c is available for Windows/NT). Invoke topdf by the command topdf(), or, if you want to convert a graphic other than the last one created, run topdf(filename) to convert filename.ps to filename.pdf. If trellis=TRUE, setps invokes trellis.device with a postscript device argument, and it does not set any of the par parameters. Arguments 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 10 to setps are ignored if trellis=TRUE. If options(setpsPrefix="name") is defined, the "name" string will be prefixed to the file name used by setps. setpdf uses a similar option setpdfPrefix. setps and setpdf set par(mgp=c(2,0.4,0)) if trellis=FALSE.

setpdf is similar to setps but for making Adobe Acrobat PDF graphics files directly. There are a few problems with the S-Plus pdf.graph function used by setpdf, though: (1) the default for points (open circle) is too large, (2) graphs are not centered properly, (3) gray scale does not work, and (4) there is some wasted space at the bottom of the graph. When drawing points, the user may want to specify cex=0.7. It may be better to use setps followed by topdf().

tex is a little function to save typing when including \tex commands in graphs that are used with the psfrag package in LaTeX to typeset any LaTeX text inside a postscript graphic. tex surrounds the input character string with \tex[options]{}. This is especially useful for getting Greek letters and math symbols in postscript graphs. By default tex returns a string with psfrag commands specifying that the string be centered, not rotated, and not specially enlarged or shrunk.

showPsfrag is used to display (using ghostview) a postscript image that contained psfrag LaTeX strings, by building a small LaTeX script and running latex and dvips.

Usage

ps.slide(file, background = if (type != 2) "white" else "navy blue",
         foreground = if (type == 2) "yellow" else
                     (if(background == "white") "black" else "white"),
         font = "Helvetica", pointsize = c(24, 28, 14, 14)[type],
         hor = type != 4, lwd = c(2, 5, 2, 4)[type],
         mgp = if(under.unix) list(c(1.8, 0.4, 0), c(1.5, 0.2, 0),
                 c(2, 0.4, 0), c(1.5, 0.2, 0))[[type]] else
                 list(c(1.8, 0.5, 0), c(1.5, 0.4, 0), c(2, 0.5, 0),
                 c(1.5, 0.4, 0))[[type]],
         mar = list(c(4, 3, 2, 1) + 0.1, c(5, 4, 2.25, 2) + 0.1,
                 c(3, 3, 1, 1) + 0.1, c(5, 4, 2.25, 2) + 0.1)[[type]],
         pch = 202, view = FALSE, pcx = FALSE, tiff = FALSE,
         close = view | pcx | tiff, bty = "l",
         type = 2, height = switch(type, NULL, NULL, 5, 8),
         width = switch(type, NULL, NULL, 7, 7),
         tck = if (type == 3 || !under.unix) -0.013 else par("tck"),
         las = if (type == 3) 1 else 0, eps =  FALSE, ...)

setps(filename, w=0, h=3, pointsize=10, sublines=0, toplines=0,
      type="symbol", lwd=2, font="Helvetica",
      leftlines=0, las=1,
      trellis=!(missing(setTrellis.) & missing(strip.blank) &
                missing(lty.dot.line) & missing(lwd.dot.line)), 
      setTrellis.=TRUE, 
      strip.blank =TRUE, lty.dot.line = 1, lwd.dot.line = 1,
      seqno=NULL, color=FALSE)

setpdf(filename, w=0, h=4, pointsize=10, sublines=0, toplines=0,
       type="symbol", lwd=1.5, font=if(.R.)"Helvetica" else 1,
       ratio= if(.R.) 4/3 else (1 + sqrt(5))/2,
       leftlines=0, las=1, bty='l', hor=FALSE, 
       trellis=!(missing(setTrellis.) & missing(strip.blank) &
                 missing(lty.dot.line) & missing(lwd.dot.line)), 
       setTrellis.=TRUE, 
       strip.blank =TRUE, lty.dot.line = 1, lwd.dot.line =1,
       region=c(0, 0, h, w), color=FALSE, seqno=NULL, ...)

tex(string, lref='c', psref='c', scale=1, srt=0)

showPsfrag(filename)

Arguments

Value

nothing, for most of the functions. tex returns a modified character string.

Side Effects

Starts a postscript file or a process to convert it to pcx format, or starts a Trellis postscript device. ps.slide Stores a system option ps.slide.file. pdf.graph opens a graphics file using pdf.graph. setps creates a function topdf in frame 0 (the session database).

Author(s)

Frank Harrell
Department of Biostatistics
Vanderbilt University
f.harrell@vanderbilt.edu

References

Grant MC, Carlisle (1998): The PSfrag System, Version 3. Full documentation is obtained by searching www.ctan.org for pfgguide.ps.

See Also

postscript, par, ps.options, mgp.axis.labels, pdf, trellis.device, setTrellis

Examples

## Not run: 
ps.slide("myslide")   # myslide is file name prefix
# use ps.slide("myslide",back="green") to use e.g. green background
plot(x, y)
title("My Title")

ps.slide(view=TRUE)   # makes myslide.ps file
                   # use ps.slide(close=TRUE) to close file without viewing with
                   # ghostview.
ps.slide(view=TRUE, pcx=TRUE)
                   # converts myslide.ps into myslide.pcx (PC Paintbrush
                   # format suitable for importing in PC graphics packages)
mgp.axis.labels(c(.4,1.2))  # override 2nd mgp parameters for x- and y axes
mgp.axis.labels(type='x')   # retrieve 3 mgp parameters for x-axis

setps(myfile)      # equiv. to setps('myfile', type='char')
                   # setps(myfile, trellis=TRUE, other args) for Trellis
# plotting commands
dev.off()
topdf()            # topdf created by setps
                   # makes Ghostscript create "myfile.pdf"
setpdf(myfile)
# plotting commands
dev.off()

# Put math and Greek symbols in a graph
setps(test)
x <- seq(0,15,length=100)
plot(x, dchisq(x, 5), xlab=tex('$x$'),
        ylab=tex('$f(x)$'), type='l')
title(tex('Density Function of the $\chi_{5}^{2}$ Distribution'))
dev.off()
# To process this file in LaTeX do something like
#\documentclass{article}
#\usepackage[scanall]{psfrag}
#\begin{document}
#\begin{figure}
#\includegraphics{test.ps}
#\caption{This is an example}
#\end{figure}
#\end{document}
## End(Not run)