Initializing Trellis Displays

Initialization of a display device with appropriate graphical parameters.

trellis.device(device = getOption("device"),
               color = !(dev.name == "postscript"),
               theme = lattice.getOption("default.theme"),
               new = TRUE,
               retain = FALSE,
               ...)

Arguments

device

function (or the name of one as a character string) that starts a device. Admissible values depend on the platform and how R was compiled (see Devices), but usually "pdf", "postscript", "png", "jpeg" and at least one of "X11", "windows" and "quartz" will be available.

color

logical, whether the initial settings should be color or black and white. Defaults to FALSE for postscript devices, TRUE otherwise. Note that this only applies to the initial choice of colors, which can be overridden using theme or subsequent calls to trellis.par.set (and by arguments supplied directly in high level calls for some settings).

theme

list of components that changes the settings of the device opened, or, a function that when called produces such a list. The function name can be supplied as a quoted string. These settings are only used to modify the default settings (determined by other arguments), and need not contain all possible parameters.

A possible use of this argument is to change the default settings by specifying lattice.options(default.theme = "col.whitebg"). For back-compatibility, this is initially (when lattice is loaded) set to getOption(lattice.theme).

If theme is a function, it will not be supplied any arguments, however, it is guaranteed that a device will already be open when it is called, so one may use .Device inside the function to ascertain what device has been opened.

new

logical flag indicating whether a new device should be started. If FALSE, the options for the current device are changed to the defaults determined by the other arguments.

retain

logical. If TRUE and a setting for this device already exists, then that is used instead of the defaults for this device. By default, pre-existing settings are overwritten (and lost).

name

name of the device for which the setting is required, as returned by .Device

...

additional parameters to be passed to the device function, most commonly file for non-screen devices, as well as height, width, etc. See the help file for individual devices for admissible arguments.

Details

The trellis.device function sets up an R graphics device for use with lattice graphics, by opening the device if necessary, and defining a set of associated graphical parameters (colors, line types, fonts, etc.).

Even if a device is opened without calling trellis.device, for example, by calling a device function directly, trellis.device is still called automatically when a "trellis" object is plotted. The default graphical settings used in this case can be customized using lattice.options. It is therefore rarely necessary for the user to call trellis.device explicitly.

Value

None; trellis.device is called for the side effect of opening a device and / or setting associated graphical parameters.

Note

Earlier versions of trellis.device had a bg argument to set the background color, but this is no longer supported. If supplied, the bg argument will be passed on to the device function; however, this will have no effect on the Trellis settings. It is rarely meaningful to change the background alone; if you feel the need to change the background, consider using the theme argument instead.

References

Sarkar, Deepayan (2008) Lattice: Multivariate Data Visualization with R, Springer. http://lmdvr.r-forge.r-project.org/

Author

Deepayan Sarkar Deepayan.Sarkar@R-project.org