[R] Wrong symbol rendering in plots (Ubuntu)

[Erik Iverson]

> plot(c(1:10))
> 
> when put into a pdf file via pdf() device, will display incorrect
> symbols in linux pdf viewers (evince, okular). The circles (o) become
> q, literally the letter q, and lose colors. 

This issue is already in the Notes section of ?pdf.  It remains to be 
seen if the OP's problem was this exact one, since they didn't specify 
an example.

 From ?pdf,

      On some systems the default plotting character ‘pch = 1’ is
      displayed in some PDF viewers incorrectly as a ‘"q"’ character.
      (These seem to be viewers based on the ‘poppler’ PDF rendering
      library). This may be due to incorrect or incomplete mapping of
      font names to those used by the system.  Adding the following
      lines to ‘~/.fonts.conf’ or ‘/etc/fonts/local.conf’ may circumvent
      this problem.



      <alias binding="same">
             <family>ZapfDingbats</family>
             <accept><family>Dingbats</family></accept>
      </alias>