[R] Changing fonts in the standard R editor

[Ben Bolker]

On 9/18/25 15:34, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 2025-09-18 2:58 p.m., Bert Gunter wrote:
>> By "standard R editor" to you mean the RGUI editor that ships with R? 
>> On my
>> Mac platform, it has menu entries in the "Format" menu that allow you to
>> choose different fonts and sizes. On Windows, of course, the menus may be
>> organized differently, but I would assume there's something similar. 
>> If you
>> mean some other editor (e.g. see ?edit), then you need to dig into their
>> docs. Again, I assume something similar would be available.
> 
> I don't think it is available in Rgui.exe.  I believe that as Tim 
> describes, there's just one choice of font, you don't get "rich text" 
> like you do in the Mac R.app editor.

   But did font size *used* to be adjustable in Rgui.exe?  "I think that 
this used to be possible"

   I don't know exactly where to look for changes, I was looking at 
history of stuff in R/src/gnuwin32 (especially editor.h, editor.c) but 
didn't get very far.  Maybe things also changed in the upstream Windows 
libraries, i.e. Rtools → MINGW-w64, etc. ??




> Duncan Murdoch
> 
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Bert
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 18, 2025 at 11:36 AM John Warner 
>> <John.Warner using chdifoundation.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear R development  Team
>>> I am a long time user of R with a distinctly poor vision.  I have been
>>> using the standard R interface for many years and am comfortable with it
>>> except for one minor detail.  There seems to be no way to change the 
>>> font
>>> in the standard R editor.  I think that this used to be possible and 
>>> would
>>> like it to be brought back in future releases.  At the moment I have 
>>> many R
>>> command files with font sizes that suit my needs.  By copying these and
>>> renaming I can continue to work with fonts that I like.  It also 
>>> seems to
>>> work if I start a new file in notepad and set the font size there.  I 
>>> can
>>> then open this file in the R editor and the font size will be 
>>> retained.  At
>>> the very least I would like to be sure that work arounds like this 
>>> remain
>>> possible in any new releases.
>>> Best
>>> John Warner
>>>
>>>
>>> John H. Warner, PhD, MBA
>>> Director, Biostatistics
>>> CHDI Management / CHDI Foundation
>>> 155 Village Boulevard, Suite 200
>>> Princeton, NJ, 08540
>>> (609) 945-9644: office
>>> (609) 751-7345: cell
>>> (609) 452-2160: fax
>>> john.warner using CHDIfoundation.org<mailto:john.warner using CHDIfoundation.org>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>          [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>     [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide https://www.R-project.org/posting- 
>> guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide https://www.R-project.org/posting- 
> guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

-- 
Dr. Benjamin Bolker
Professor, Mathematics & Statistics and Biology, McMaster University
Associate chair (graduate), Mathematics & Statistics
Director, School of Computational Science and Engineering
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