[R] on specifying an encoding for plot's main-argument

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 29/01/2016 10:35 AM, Daniel Bastos wrote:
> Here's how I plot a graph.
>
>    plot(c(1,2,3), main = "graph ç")
>
> The main-string has a UTF-8 character "ç".  I believe I'm using the
> windows device.  It opens up on my screen.  (The window says ``R
> Graphics: Device 2 (ACTIVE)''.)  How can I tell it to use my encoding of
> choice?

As far as I know that's impossible.  R uses the system encoding, and I 
don't think any Windows versions use UTF-8 code pages.  They use UTF-16 
for wide characters, and some 8 bit encoding for byte-sized characters. 
  R will use whatever 8 bit code page Windows chooses.
>
> I looked around the web for explanations on how to properly tell the
> relevant mecanisms that I'm using strings with a partcular encoding when
> plotting.  I saw many with my difficulty, but no one seemed to explain
> the whole issue.

If you enter the string as a literal, it is not using UTF-8 encoding, 
it's using the system's 8 bit encoding.

>
> At first I thought I should tell the device.  So I looked at the
> documentation for various devices.  I realized only devices such as
> postscript, pdf had an encoding parameter.  ``My assumptions must be
> wrong'', I thought.  ``Perhaps it's not the device I must tell my
> encoding.''
>
> Then I come to you.  Can you point me towards understanding the issue?
> You can tell me to read an entire book on encoding, charset and fonts.
> I'd like to free myself from such difficulties.
>
> I use R and ESS (GNU EMACS).  (My ESS console says 'U' in the EMACS
> modeline.  It means I'm encoding in UTF-8.  I tried '1', ISO-8859-1,
> also called Latin-1.)

Duncan Murdoch