[R] Bold greek letters using plotmath

[Jim Price]

I'm trying to annotate some graphics using plotmath and finding out that the
code I'm using isn't bolding the greek letters - it bolds the rest (once I
adjusted the numerics to characters), it's just failing on the greek
characters.

Any suggestions welcomed.

Jim Price.
Cardiome Pharma Corp.


Test code:


plot(1:5, type = 'n')


# The not bold version
text(2, 2:4, cex = 2, labels = do.call(expression,
unlist(list('Placebo', lapply(c(3, 6), function(.x) substitute(.x ~~ mu * g
/ kg / hr, list(.x = .x)))), recur = F)))


# The bold version - note that the greek letter doesn't change
text(4, 2:4, cex = 2, labels = do.call(expression,
unlist(list(substitute(bold(Placebo)), lapply(as.character(c(3, 6)),
function(.x) substitute(bold(.x ~~ mu * g / kg / hr), list(.x = .x)))),
recur = F)))

sessionInfo()

R version 2.10.0 (2009-10-26)
i386-pc-mingw32

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252 LC_CTYPE=English_United
States.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252

attached base packages:
[1] graphics grDevices utils datasets methods stats base

other attached packages:
[1] foreign_0.8-38 latticeExtra_0.6-1 RColorBrewer_1.0-2 lattice_0.17-26

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] grid_2.10.0 tools_2.10.0

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Plotmath does not have a bold symbol font -- R's plotting system has
only 5 fonts (see 'font' in ?par), and bold symbol fonts are not
commonly installed in plotting systems.

Strictly the symbols such as mu used in mathematical notation differ
from the letters used in Greek. You may get a good substitute using
a Greek letter, depending on the device -- which you have not told us
but I would guess() was windows().

Try replating mu by "\u03bc". (I am not using Windows, but this works
on X11() and quartz() for example.)

Post by Jim Price
I'm trying to annotate some graphics using plotmath and finding out that the
code I'm using isn't bolding the greek letters - it bolds the rest (once I
adjusted the numerics to characters), it's just failing on the greek
characters.
Any suggestions welcomed.
Jim Price.
Cardiome Pharma Corp.
plot(1:5, type = 'n')
# The not bold version
text(2, 2:4, cex = 2, labels = do.call(expression,
unlist(list('Placebo', lapply(c(3, 6), function(.x) substitute(.x ~~ mu * g
/ kg / hr, list(.x = .x)))), recur = F)))
# The bold version - note that the greek letter doesn't change
text(4, 2:4, cex = 2, labels = do.call(expression,
unlist(list(substitute(bold(Placebo)), lapply(as.character(c(3, 6)),
function(.x)

substitute(bold(.x ~~ mu * g / kg / hr), list(.x = .x)))),

Post by Jim Price
recur = F)))

sessionInfo()

R version 2.10.0 (2009-10-26)
i386-pc-mingw32
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252 LC_CTYPE=English_United
States.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
[1] graphics grDevices utils datasets methods stats base
[1] foreign_0.8-38 latticeExtra_0.6-1 RColorBrewer_1.0-2 lattice_0.17-26
[1] grid_2.10.0 tools_2.10.0