tikzDevice

The tikzDevice package provides a graphics output device for R that records plots in a LaTeX-friendly format. The device transforms plotting commands issued by R functions into LaTeX code blocks. When included in a paper typeset by LaTeX, these blocks are interpreted with the help of TikZ---a graphics package for TeX and friends written by Till Tantau.

Using the tikzDevice, the text of R plots can contain LaTeX commands such as mathematical formula. The device also allows arbitrary LaTeX code to be inserted into the output stream.

The tikzDevice supports three main modes of output:

• Figure chunks: placed in .tex files and suitable for inclusion in LaTeX documents via the \input{} command.

• Stand alone figures: Complete LaTeX documents containing figure code that can be compiled into stand-alone images. Pages are cropped to the size of the figure using the LaTeX preview package.

• Console output: TikZ code is returned directly to the R console as a character vector for further manipulation.

Beta Notice

The tikzDevice is currently flagged as a beta work. The package is reasonably stable and has been used by the authors to produce graphics for academic publications for over a two years. The reason for beta status is that there are several open design issues- two of which are:

• Providing support for UTF8 text.

• Supporting TeX variants other than LaTeX.

Resolving these issues may require changes to the tikzDevice that break backwards compatibility with previous versions. The beta flag is a reminder that such changes may occur- although we will strive to avoid them if possible.

The beta flag will be removed upon release of version 1.0. At this time the tikzDevice will switch to semantic versioning and changes that break backwards compatibility will happen rarely and will incur a major release.

Obtaining the Package

Stable versions of the tikzDevice may be installed from CRAN:

install.packages( 'tikzDevice' )

Development builds may be installed from R-Forge:

install.packages( 'tikzDevice',
  repos='http://r-forge.r-project.org' )

Bleeding-edge source code is available from GitHub:

git clone git://github.com/Sharpie/RTikZDevice.git

Source code checked out from GitHub cannot be installed directly by R CMD INSTALL. There are some tasks that need to be executed to prepare the source for installation. A makefile is provided that can execute these tasks. To work with source code checked out from GitHub, ensure you are using GNU Make and execute the following:

make

That will print out a list of tasks available, including installation.

Reporting Bugs and Getting Help

The tikzDevice has a dedicated mailing list courtesy of R-Forge. The mailing list is the easiest way to get answers for questions related to usage:

tikzdevice-bugs @at@ lists.r-forge.r-project.org

The mailing list may also be accessed through Google Groups:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tikzdevice

Primary development takes place on GitHub. Bugs and feature requests may be made by opening issues at the primary repository:

https://github.com/Sharpie/RTikZDevice/issues

Adventurous users are encouraged to fork the repository and contribute to the development of the package!

Latest Changes

See the NEWS file for changes that occurred in previous releases

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Version: 0.6.3

Under development

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New Features

• The tikz function now has a onefile argument that behaves similar to the onefile argument of the pdf device.

• LuaLaTeX is now supported directly and can be selected by passing engine = 'luatex' to tikz.

Bug Fixes

• Colorized text now obeys transparency settings.

• The tikzDevice no longer produces output for plots that are completely empty.

• The tikz option footer now works as described by the documentation. Previously, it had no effect.

• The tikz device can now handle raster images with negative widths or heights that arise from calling a raster plotting function using reversed axes.

• Creating raster output with the tikzDevice could mess with the behavior of some graphical paramaters such as par('mfrow'). This has been fixed.

• Calls to the Filehash package have been protected from user interruptions. This should prevent rogue lockfiles and corrupted metrics dictionaries.

• The documentDeclaration and packages arguments to the tikz function are now used in metric calculations. Previously, only global options were consulted.

Behind the Scenes

• The tikzDevice now requires R 2.12.0 or later.

• Upgrade documentation generation from Roxygen to Roxygen2.

• Testing framework updated to use testthat 0.6. Earlier versions of testthat are no longer supported due to a switch from Mutatr classes to standard R Reference Classes.

• Some magic numbers that control the leading used in the margin text of base graphics were adjusted to values used by the PDF device. Hopefully this will make the spacing used by x axis labels and y axis labels a bit more symmetric.

• The tikzDevice now delays the creation of clipping scopes until a drawing operation occurs that can be clipped. This prevents empty clipping scopes from appearing in the output and can reduce the size of the output by ~3/4 in some cases.

• The code that handles line color and fill color has been completely refactored to avoid useless operations such as 0 transparency fills and draws.

Contributors

The following people contributed to this release of the tikzDevice:

• Zack Weinberg for suggestions and comments that led to optimizations in the quality and quantity of TikZ output.

• Romain Franconville for bugreports that led to the discovery of two bugs in the raster routines.