Is it possible to resize an interactive R graphics device with R code?

Question

When using R within an interactive windowing system (such as Windows, Ubuntu, MacOSX) the default behaviour for plot(x) is to open an interactive graphics device (with plot.new() under the hood), and draw stuff on it. The device can be interactively moved, resize and closed, and (depending on the platform) presents other GUI-based operations. It can be closed or copied with R code, with dev.off(), dev.copy() and there are other functions in the family.

Can the device be moved or resized using R code?

I realize that this question may have many platform-specific answers, and all and any detail is welcome. I am most interested in the default Windows install options for the latest version of R, but keen to learn more about the differences between OS environments and other options.

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 03 '11 at 17:14

5

If you really wanted to do this, you could use the GTK libraries and the cairoDevice package. Then you can resize things with RGtk2 calls. It isn't the default install, but is cross platform.

library(RGtk2)
library(cairoDevice)
w = gtkWindow()
da <- gtkDrawingArea()
asCairoDevice(da)
w <- gtkWindow(show=FALSE)
w$add(da)
w$show()
hist(rnorm(100))
w$resize(500, 500)
w$move(200,200)

answered Jun 03 '11 at 17:14

jverzani

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Oh, nice to know that you can get there via RGtk2! – Dirk Eddelbuettel Jun 03 '11 at 23:05

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:22

A collection of past attempts with few answers but possibly useful:

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2002-October/025840.html : very old question. Gets the usual snark from BDR. Poster claims "I found in mailing list archives article, that describes how to resize X11 graphical window on *nix through *nix command-line interface from R.:)"
this http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp01/archive/13765.html may be what he was talking about, which might (?) still work on X11 systems -- haven't tried it
How to change current Plot Window Size (in R) gives a (hacked) Windows-specific solution that involves recording the graphics, closing the window, and opening another one ...
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Resize-Graphics-Window-td2103378.html (no answer)
http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/05/10/13546.html asks about Quartz, and gets only answers about how to set the size when opening the window initially

I wonder if anyone has tried to compile all (or choice bits) of BDR snark in one place. Might make for some amusing reading. — joran, Jun 03 '11 at 17:18

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 03 '11 at 15:50

Have you look at the excellent packages by Felix Andrews which bring much interactivity to lattice devices:

If your question is about the physical size of the window on the screen: I don't think so. That is a window manager task, and you would have to write (very platform dependent, I suspect) code to alter the window once drawn.

Is it possible to resize an interactive R graphics device with R code?

3 Answers3