Prof. Ripley, Happy to help.
So, it sounds like we are thinking along the same lines then. A couple of follow up questions: 1. Is R_PAPERSIZE_DEFAULT to be the proposed new compile time setting in 2.4.0? Unless I missed it, I did not see it documented anywhere (ie. R-admin/NEWS for 2.2.1 patched or 2.3.0 devel) and it is not in the configure related files that I have here. 2. For LC_ALL, it is not set (at least on my FC4 system, have not had the time yet to go to FC5) in en_US.UTF-8. Is it set in other locales such that it would be of value? Thanks also for the pointer to the devel guidelines. I had read through them at some point in the past, but it has been a while. Regards, Marc On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 18:48 +0100, Prof Brian Ripley wrote: > Marc, > > Thanks for the comments. The 2.3.x series is in feature freeze, and > although a few features do break though for patch releases, they had > better be `badly needed' see > http://developer.r-project.org/devel-guidelines.txt). > > So I was thinking of 2.4.0. > > My suggestion was going to be along the lines of > > local({ > papersize <- as.vector(Sys.getenv("R_PAPERSIZE")) > if(!nchar(papersize)) { > lcpaper <- Sys.getlocale("LC_PAPER") > if(nchar(lcpaper)) > papersize <- if(length(grep(, lcpaper)) > 0) "letter" else "a4" > else papersize <- as.vector(Sys.getenv("R_PAPERSIZE_DEFAULT")) > } > options(papersize = papersize) > }) > > This is unchanged if LC_PAPER is unset. For those with LC_PAPER set, > its value takes precedence over the compile-time default. That's almost > exactly equivalent to what happens on Windows (which sets LC_MONETARY for > this purpose, as LC_PAPER is not a locale category there). > > Now, one could argue that if LC_PAPER is unset it should default to > LC_ALL, but I think is less desirable. > > Of course, at present Sys.getlocale("LC_PAPER") is not supported, so > that's part of the TODO. > > Brian > > > On Thu, 20 Apr 2006, Marc Schwartz (via MN) wrote: > > > On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 08:09 +0100, Prof Brian Ripley wrote: > >> R uses the environment variable R_PAPERSIZE to set its papersize, e.g. for > >> postscript. > >> > >> It seems the modern way is to via LC_PAPER, e.g. > >> > >> http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/2002-05/msg00010.html > >> > >> and Googling will show that people expect this to work. > >> > >> However, that is not set on my FC3 system, and it would affect people who > >> use en_US as their locale in, say, Austria. > >> > >> Should we be making use of LC_PAPER, or would it just cause further > >> complications? (On Windows, the locale name is used to set the default > >> papersize, but there it is unlikely to be set inappropriately.) > > > > > > Here's my 0.0162 Euros (at current conversion rates): > > > > For R 2.4.0, announce that LC_PAPER will become the default environment > > variable used to set the default R papersize and then not set > > R_PAPERSIZE by default (ie. in build scripts, etc.) > > > > However, If someone sets R_PAPERSIZE in their site or local profile, > > this will supercede the LC_PAPER setting. This would allow for a R > > setting that may need to be different than the system default. > > > > Doing this for 2.4.0 (as opposed to 2.3.x) would give folks notice and > > time to consider the impact on their local installations and code, while > > enabling future users to take advantage of the standard. > > > > I think that in general, R should abide by published standards unless > > there are very compelling reasons not to. > > > > HTH, > > > > Marc Schwartz > > > > > > > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
