[R] text plots?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 12 May 2006, Robert Citek wrote:

> Is there a way to do text plots in R?

Not that I know of.  I last used such plots ca 1985, long before R was
conceived of and when student terminal rooms had 80*24 VDUs.

> I'd like to do some simple XY plots in R with the output in text
> (ascii).  For example, with gnuplot I can do the following:
>
> echo 'set terminal dumb ; plot sin(x)' | gnuplot
>
> To generate a simple sin wave.  Since I connect to a remote Linux
> machine using SSH, being able to generate a rough idea of what a plot
> will look like in text would be of benefit.

I routinely use a Linux box remotely, but either view on an X connection 
(e.g. from my home to my office, and I have even done internationally), or 
write PDF and remote access the file. I even see people using Windows 
Terminal Services remotely over quite slow lines.

> I've looked at ?plot, ?par, and ?plot.default but didn't see anything 
> obvious.

You need to look at devices (e.g. ?Devices), not how to plot on a device.

BTW, devices do not need to be part of R so anyone could write such a 
device and contribute it (in a package).


-- 
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