[R] Mtext doesn't display characters in italic when I use a greek symbol

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 7 Aug 2008, michael watson (IAH-C) wrote:

> Following on from my previous mail!
>
> plot(1:10,1:10)
> mtext("title", side=3, adj=0, font=3, cex=1.5)
>
> This works as expected and puts the font in italics.
>
> tag <- "A)"
> suffix <- "genea::"
> plot(1:10,1:10)
> mtext(bquote(.(tag) ~ Delta * .(suffix)), side=3, adj=0, font=3,
> cex=1.5)
>
> Here, the font isn't in italics, it's normal.
>
> I presume this is some interplay with bquote(), or perhaps R doesn't
> know the italics version of the capital greek delta character?

R does, but (yet again) this is a mathematical symbol Delta, not a Greek 
character.  And there is only one font for mathematical symbols and that 
is not italic in R's standard devices (unlike TeX).

I have already told you how to do this -- but on Windows you need an 
up-to-date version of R, so please install an R-devel snapshot from CRAN.

tag <- "A)"
suffix <- "genea::"
plot(1:10,1:10)
mtext(paste(tag, "\u0394", suffix), side=3, adj=0, cex=1.5, font=3)

does work, and it even uses a consistent font.

In future I will only answer follow-up postings that use symbol vs Greek 
character correctly ....

>
> Any idea how I can get it into italics?
>
> Thanks
> Mick
>
> Head of Informatics
> Institute for Animal Health
> Compton
> Berks
> RG20 7NN
> 01635 578411
>
> http://www.iah.ac.uk/research/bioinformatics/bioinf.shtml
>
> The information contained in this message may be confide...{{dropped:14}}
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595