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rantialiasing

Anti-aliasing in R graphics under Windows (as per Mac)

is there a way to plot anti-aliased graphics from the Windows version of R? As you can see from the two versions below the Mac version of R prints graphics anti aliased.... Mac Version

....whereas while the Windows version anti-aliases text, it does not anti-alias the actual graphic, as can be seen from the riser points, and the grid: Windows Version

Here is the code by the way:

library(scatterplot3d) 
attach(mtcars) 
s3d <-scatterplot3d(wt,disp,mpg, pch=16, highlight.3d=TRUE,
  type="h", main="3D Scatterplot")
fit <- lm(mpg ~ wt+disp) 
s3d$plane3d(fit)

I need the highest quality possible, for web page publication. I am running Windows 7 and pulling data from RBloomberg, which only works under Windows.

Solution

  • This is likely to depend on details of the rendering engine on each platform, which could be hard to modify. My suggestions (untested, for lack of time and access to Windows):

    • install the cairoDevice package and use Cairo_png(). According to the documentation:
     This functions the same as any other R graphics device. You may
 use the conventional plot commands and expect essentially the same
 output, except that everything is anti-aliased (similar to other
 vector-based devices like Quartz). Alpha-blending is supported, as
 is enhanced interactivity via ‘getGraphicsEvent’. The device
 should work the same across all supported platforms (Mac, Windows,
 and Linux).
    • Render the PNG at a much higher resolution (or output data from R as PDF) and use ImageMagick (convert) or some other tool to get the anti-aliased version you need.