[R] axis.Date language

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 09/07/12 01:43, Mikkel Grum wrote:
> Dear useRs
>
> I need to do graphs with dates in different languages on Ubuntu.
>
> In Windows the following will plot the date axis labels in Spanish:
>
> random.dates <- as.Date("2001/1/1") + 70*sort(stats::runif(100))
>> language <- "Spanish"
>> Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", language)
>> plot(random.dates, 1:100, xaxt="n")
>> axis.Date(1, at=seq(as.Date("2001/1/1"), max(random.dates)+6, "weeks"))
>
> Changing the language to "English" will have the same code produce a graph with English labels.
> On Ubuntu, attempting to change the locale language results in an error message:
> 'OS reports request to set locale to "Spanish" cannot be honored'
>
>
> Is there another way of changing the axis labels for dates to a different language on the fly?

That is the way, but you are not specifying the language (really locale) 
correctly.  See the R manuals, 
e.g.http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.html#Locales-under-Linux .

For me,
Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", "es_ES.UTF-8")
appears to work.

There are international standards for this kind of thing: and then there 
is Windows ....

>
> Regards
> Mikkel



-- 
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