Re: [Rd] Grapics Device Resolution Limits

[Dario Strbenac]

Good day,

> In general, the device-limits info is not on the help page because we do not 
> know it.

It seems like it would be near-impossible to do in a cross-platform way.

> Normally you will get warning(s) accompanying that Error ...
> Warning: unable to allocate bitmap
> Warning: opening device failed

Yes, I saw those but omitted them from the question.

> Note that there are at least 5 separate png() devices, so Linux was not using 
> the (default) device used on Windows.

That explains it.

> Try the other 2 types: the cairo devices do not use your graphics hardware 
> nor MicroSoft's GDI.

Indeed, it works with the cairo backend.

> ... one could well ask what you can usefully do with such an image.

Unfortunately, some scientific journals have unrealistic figure requirements, 
e.g. http://www.jidonline.org/content/authorinfo#idp1498768

--
Dario Strbenac
University of Sydney
Camperdown NSW 2050
Australia
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Re: [Rd] Grapics Device Resolution Limits

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 10/02/2017 19:27, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

Note that there are at least 5 separate png() devices, so Linux was not
using the (default) device used on Windows.

In general, the device-limits info is not on the help page because we do
not know it.  On Windows the default device limits depend on the OS
version, 32/64-bit, RAM and the graphics hardware.  This sounds like the
last: you were asking for 49 megapixels which is far larger than the
largest screens.  (Or all but the highest-end digital cameras, so one
could well ask what you can usefully do with such an image.)


Scratch that: res is in ppi so the image should be 2755px square: still 
rather large.



Normally you will get warning(s) accompanying that Error, but it might
just be

Warning: unable to allocate bitmap
Warning: opening device failed

The first of those is reporting what the GraphApp toolkit said, talking
directly to Windows GDI (and look at the Windows documentation for e.g.
CreateCompatibleBitmap to see that no limits are mentioned).


Even on Windows you have the option of using other png() devices:

png(filename = "Rplot03d.png",
width = 480, height = 480, units = "px", pointsize = 12,
bg = "white", res = NA, family = "", restoreConsole = TRUE,
type = c("windows", "cairo", "cairo-png"), antialias)

Try the other 2 types: the cairo devices do not use your graphics
hardware nor MicroSoft's GDI. (The other 2 devices are Xlib on a
Unix-alike and Quartz on macOS.)


On 10/02/2017 16:54, Martin Maechler wrote:

Dario Strbenac 
on Fri, 10 Feb 2017 02:00:08 + writes:


> Good day,
> Could the documentation of graphics devices give some
explanation of how big the bitmap limits are? For example,

>> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")

> Results in Error: unable to start png() device,

This is amazing to me.  I see

--


png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")
plot(1)
dev.off()

null device
  1

file.info("Figure1A.png")[1:5]

  size isdir mode   mtime   ctime
Figure1A.png 41272 FALSE  644 2017-02-10 17:40:42 2017-02-10 17:40:42



--


in three different versions of R I've tried (all were 64-bit Linux).
Note how *small* the file is.
Now, I've also tried a 32-bit version of Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) and get
a similar result (not exactly the same number of bytes for the file
size).



but the help page of devices doesn't explain that there are any
limits or how they are determined. The wording of the error message
could also be improved, to explain that the resolution is too high or
the dimensions are too large.


If one/some of those who can reproduce the problem in their
versions of R  provide (concise and not hard to read) patches to
the source of R, we'd probably gratefully accept them..

Martin Maechler

>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.3.2 Patched (2017-02-07 r72138)
> Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
> Running under: Windows 7 (build 7601) Service Pack 1

> --
> Dario Strbenac
> University of Sydney
> Camperdown NSW 2050
> Australia





--
Brian D. Ripley,  rip...@stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford

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Re: [Rd] Grapics Device Resolution Limits

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Note that there are at least 5 separate png() devices, so Linux was not 
using the (default) device used on Windows.


In general, the device-limits info is not on the help page because we do 
not know it.  On Windows the default device limits depend on the OS 
version, 32/64-bit, RAM and the graphics hardware.  This sounds like the 
last: you were asking for 49 megapixels which is far larger than the 
largest screens.  (Or all but the highest-end digital cameras, so one 
could well ask what you can usefully do with such an image.)


Normally you will get warning(s) accompanying that Error, but it might 
just be


Warning: unable to allocate bitmap
Warning: opening device failed

The first of those is reporting what the GraphApp toolkit said, talking 
directly to Windows GDI (and look at the Windows documentation for e.g. 
CreateCompatibleBitmap to see that no limits are mentioned).



Even on Windows you have the option of using other png() devices:

png(filename = "Rplot03d.png",
width = 480, height = 480, units = "px", pointsize = 12,
bg = "white", res = NA, family = "", restoreConsole = TRUE,
type = c("windows", "cairo", "cairo-png"), antialias)

Try the other 2 types: the cairo devices do not use your graphics 
hardware nor MicroSoft's GDI. (The other 2 devices are Xlib on a 
Unix-alike and Quartz on macOS.)



On 10/02/2017 16:54, Martin Maechler wrote:

Dario Strbenac 
on Fri, 10 Feb 2017 02:00:08 + writes:


> Good day,
> Could the documentation of graphics devices give some explanation of how 
big the bitmap limits are? For example,

>> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")

> Results in Error: unable to start png() device,

This is amazing to me.  I see

--

png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")
plot(1)
dev.off()

null device
  1

file.info("Figure1A.png")[1:5]

  size isdir mode   mtime   ctime
Figure1A.png 41272 FALSE  644 2017-02-10 17:40:42 2017-02-10 17:40:42



--

in three different versions of R I've tried (all were 64-bit Linux).
Note how *small* the file is.
Now, I've also tried a 32-bit version of Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) and get
a similar result (not exactly the same number of bytes for the file size).



but the help page of devices doesn't explain that there are any limits or how 
they are determined. The wording of the error message could also be improved, 
to explain that the resolution is too high or the dimensions are too large.


If one/some of those who can reproduce the problem in their
versions of R  provide (concise and not hard to read) patches to
the source of R, we'd probably gratefully accept them..

Martin Maechler

>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.3.2 Patched (2017-02-07 r72138)
> Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
> Running under: Windows 7 (build 7601) Service Pack 1

> --
> Dario Strbenac
> University of Sydney
> Camperdown NSW 2050
> Australia


--
Brian D. Ripley,  rip...@stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford

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Re: [Rd] Grapics Device Resolution Limits

[William Dunlap via R-devel]

Were you suppressing warnings?  I get a warning along with the "unable
to start device 'png'" in some cases where it fails.  E.g., on Linux

> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1e5, units = "cm")
Error in png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1e+05, units = "cm") :
  unable to start device 'png'
In addition: Warning message:
In png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1e+05, units = "cm") :
  cairo error 'invalid value (typically too big) for the size of the
input (surface, pattern, etc.)'

or on Windows

> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 10, units = "cm")
Error in png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1e+05, units = "cm") :
  unable to start png() device
In addition: Warning messages:
1: In png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1e+05, units = "cm") :
  unable to allocate bitmap
2: In png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1e+05, units = "cm") :
  opening device failed

or when the current directory is not writable (or does not exist)

> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")
> plot(1:5)
Error in plot.new() : could not open file 'Figure1A.png'




Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com


On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 6:00 PM, Dario Strbenac
 wrote:
> Good day,
>
> Could the documentation of graphics devices give some explanation of how big 
> the bitmap limits are? For example,
>
>> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")
>
> Results in Error: unable to start png() device, but the help page of devices 
> doesn't explain that there are any limits or how they are determined. The 
> wording of the error message could also be improved, to explain that the 
> resolution is too high or the dimensions are too large.
>
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.3.2 Patched (2017-02-07 r72138)
> Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
> Running under: Windows 7 (build 7601) Service Pack 1
>
> --
> Dario Strbenac
> University of Sydney
> Camperdown NSW 2050
> Australia
>
> __
> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

__
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Re: [Rd] Grapics Device Resolution Limits

[Martin Maechler]

> Dario Strbenac 
> on Fri, 10 Feb 2017 02:00:08 + writes:

> Good day,
> Could the documentation of graphics devices give some explanation of how 
big the bitmap limits are? For example,

>> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")

> Results in Error: unable to start png() device, 

This is amazing to me.  I see

--
> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")
> plot(1)
> dev.off()
null device 
  1 
> file.info("Figure1A.png")[1:5]
  size isdir mode   mtime   ctime
Figure1A.png 41272 FALSE  644 2017-02-10 17:40:42 2017-02-10 17:40:42
> 
--

in three different versions of R I've tried (all were 64-bit Linux).
Note how *small* the file is.
Now, I've also tried a 32-bit version of Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) and get 
a similar result (not exactly the same number of bytes for the file size).


> but the help page of devices doesn't explain that there are any limits or how 
> they are determined. The wording of the error message could also be improved, 
> to explain that the resolution is too high or the dimensions are too large.

If one/some of those who can reproduce the problem in their
versions of R  provide (concise and not hard to read) patches to
the source of R, we'd probably gratefully accept them..

Martin Maechler

>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.3.2 Patched (2017-02-07 r72138)
> Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
> Running under: Windows 7 (build 7601) Service Pack 1

> --
> Dario Strbenac
> University of Sydney
> Camperdown NSW 2050
> Australia

> __
> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

__
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[Rd] Grapics Device Resolution Limits

[Dario Strbenac]

Good day,

Could the documentation of graphics devices give some explanation of how big 
the bitmap limits are? For example,

> png("Figure1A.png", h = 7, w = 7, res = 1000, units = "cm")

Results in Error: unable to start png() device, but the help page of devices 
doesn't explain that there are any limits or how they are determined. The 
wording of the error message could also be improved, to explain that the 
resolution is too high or the dimensions are too large.

> sessionInfo()
R version 3.3.2 Patched (2017-02-07 r72138)
Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
Running under: Windows 7 (build 7601) Service Pack 1

--
Dario Strbenac
University of Sydney
Camperdown NSW 2050
Australia

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