R+tikDevice+LaTex+knitr is (as I understand it) the most efficient way to get relly nice looking publications from R, with maximum layout-support from LaTeX.
I'm using R+LaTex+knitr now, but would like to let LaTex manage font-sizes and resolutions and proportions of plots better, so tikzDevice 0.7.0 seems to be the way to go. Here is a question that is somewhat related, but (I think) was answered pre-knitr+tikzDevice 0.7.0: Best practice regarding graphics size
But all my attempts to use tikzDevice make it more complicated, so I fear I have missed something fundamental. Probably about where the sizes of the plots are defined.
The following example tries to plot the same thing three times: First without tikzDevice and then in two tikzDevice-ways. The tikzDevice-slides are not very nice looking, which I can improve by manipulating the widths and heights. But I already defined column-with in LaTex so I shouldn't have to do more, or?
\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\title{Beamer with 2+1 plots}
\author{Chris}
<<data.prep, include=FALSE>>=
library(ggplot2)
library(tikzDevice)
options(tikzDefaultEngine='xetex')
plot.data <- data.frame(days=c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9), price=c(2,3,4,3,5,6,5,7,8))
@
\begin{frame}{2+1 Plots (no Tikz)}
\begin{columns}
\begin{column}[t]{0.40\textwidth}
<<plot1, dev='pdf', fig.width=6, fig.height=5, dpi=144, echo=FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE, cache=FALSE>>=
p <- ggplot(plot.data, aes(x=days, y=price))
p <- p + geom_line()
p
@
<<plot2, dev='pdf', fig.width=6, fig.height=5, dpi=144, echo=FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE, cache=FALSE>>=
p <- ggplot(plot.data, aes(x=days, y=price))
p <- p + geom_line()
p
@
\end{column}
\begin{column}[t]{0.58\textwidth}
<<plot3, dev='pdf', fig.width=8, fig.height=9, dpi=144, echo=FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE, cache=FALSE>>=
p <- ggplot(plot.data, aes(x=days, y=price))
p <- p + geom_line()
p
@
\end{column}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}{2+1 Plots (Tikz Attempt 1)}
\begin{columns}
\begin{column}[t]{0.40\textwidth}
<<plot4, results='hide', echo=FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE>>=
tikz("TikzAttempt1.tex",width=1.8,height=1.6)
p <- ggplot(plot.data, aes(x=days, y=price))
p <- p + geom_line()
p
dev.off()
@
\input{TikzAttempt1.tex}
<<plot5, results='hide', echo=FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE>>=
tikz("TikzAttempt2.tex",width=1.8,height=1.6)
p <- ggplot(plot.data, aes(x=days, y=price))
p <- p + geom_line()
p
dev.off()
@
\input{TikzAttempt2.tex}
\end{column}
\begin{column}[t]{0.58\textwidth}
<<plot6, results='hide', echo=FALSE, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE>>=
tikz("TikzAttempt3.tex",width=2,height=3)
p <- ggplot(plot.data, aes(x=days, y=price))
p <- p + geom_line()
p
dev.off()
@
\input{TikzAttempt3.tex}
\end{column}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}{2+1 Plots (Tikz Attempt 2)}
\begin{columns}
\begin{column}[t]{0.40\textwidth}
<<plot7, echo=FALSE, dev='tikz', fig.width=6, fig.height=5, out.width='.40\\paperwidth'>>=
p <- ggplot(plot.data, aes(x=days, y=price))
p <- p + geom_line()
p
@
<<plot8, echo=FALSE, dev='tikz', fig.width=6, fig.height=5, out.width='.40\\paperwidth'>>=
p <- ggplot(plot.data, aes(x=days, y=price))
p <- p + geom_line()
p
@
\end{column}
\begin{column}[t]{0.58\textwidth}
<<plot9, echo=FALSE, dev='tikz', fig.width=8, fig.height=9, out.width='.58\\paperwidth'>>=
p <- ggplot(plot.data, aes(x=days, y=price))
p <- p + geom_line()
p
@
\end{column}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
Where should the sizes of the plots be defined? In chunk-definition? In tikz-definition? In LaTex input-definition? Or includegraphics-settings in LaTex?
Which of the two tikzDevice-ways is best to use?
My presentations have many slides with plots, and I usually end up with pdf-files of 10MB+, which hopefully will be lower via Tikz.
For font-reasons, compilation must be done with XeLatex.
Markdown is not an option here as I need to do what only LaTex can do (not included in example).
Best Answer
This post is rather lengthy. I will attempt to address both of your main questions.
Sorry for the novel ...
Question 1
The role of
beamerLet's start by working backwards a bit. This answer will first clean up your "2+1 Plots (TikZ Attempt 2)". The reason your second attempt does not look good is largely because of
beamerand your LaTeX code and has nothing to do withknitr.I will get to discussion of font sizes and
knitrbelow. (If you wish to go there immediately, scroll down to the header "Font sizes withknitr".)chunkoptions forknitrFirst, it is important to understand what the
chunkoptionsfig.height,fig.width, andout.widthare doing. According to Yihui's documentation of these options,fig.heightandfig.widthset the figure height and width for the graphic that is produced byRin inches. The default values are 7 inches, and the value passed to these options must be numeric. On the other hand,out.width(andout.height) set the width (and height) for the graphic as it is displayed in the final output file. Thus, these values can be different. If these sizes would be different, then the graphic in the final output file is scaled accordingly.Now, let's see what's going on with your use of
beamerand its environments in your second TikZ attempt.LaTeX widths &
beamerThis requires some discussion of
\textwidthand friends. @egreg's answer to Best practice regarding graphics size provides some good discussion of this. In brief,I'm not familiar with the
beamerinternals, but thecolumnsenvironment must use aminipageor\parboxbecause\textwidthinside of thecolumnsenvironment is set to the total width of the column, not the total width of the global text area.Thus, we can pass
out.width='1\\textwidth'to thechunk, which will prevent your graphs from spilling off of the page.\paperwidthis set to the width of the entire page, including any margins. This is why your graphs appear to spill off of the page in your second attempt.Thus:
Produces:
(Note: I have passed the option
onlytextwidthto thecolumnsenvironment. See @Werner's discussion of this in his answer to Multiple columns with images and wrapped text in Beamer)To take one graph as an example, the rightmost graph on this slide was produced by
Rto be 8 inches in width and 9 inches in height. LaTeX then took this graphic and scaled it so that it would have the width of1\textwidth, which, in this case, is exactly the width of the rightmost column.Now, the fonts in these graphs are obviously still pretty small, so let's see what can be done about that.
Font sizes with
knitrThere is documentation of
TikZDevice, and I would highly recommend reading it. I'll try to distill all of the font information from the documentation into a useable format here, however.Calculating font sizes
Font sizes in LaTeX are specified in terms of a base font size. So, when you declare
\documentlcass[10pt]{beamer}, for example, all font size changes are calculated relative to that base font size and cannot easily be specified by saying something like24pt. TikZ handles this by scaling text; the scaling factor is calculated relative to the base font size (see p. 9 of the documentation for more information).Before talking about how to set the font size, however, we must actually look at how the scaling factor is calculated.
According to the documentation, the scaling factor is equal to
cex*(ps/base font size), wherecexandpsare set inR.(I'm not familiar enough with
Rto say how these are set. Based on reading theTikZDevicedocumentation, my haphazard guess is that these must somehow be set byggplot2viapar. At least, it seems that?paris the place to start if you want to try to figure it out. But I really have no idea.)The important point, though, is the the
base font sizeis a denominator. Thus, the smaller thebase font sizethe larger the font will actually be.Setting font sizes with
knitrSo how do we set this base font size? If you're using the first method where you call
tikz()directly, you can set it inside the call totikz():For reasons I'll discuss below, I prefer your other method. And we can still set the
pointsizethis way, even though we are not callingtikz()directly.knitrprovides a hook into the device, so we can usedev.args=list(pointsize=10)as achunkoption.Here is an MWE showcasing some different font sizes:
So, you can adjust
pointsize(which sets thebase font sizeused byTikZDevice) to your liking.Question 2
To try to answer your second question, I prefer the latter method that you use. This is because the plots are generated as their own PDFs and then rendered in the LaTeX output via
\includegraphics. This might be advantageous if you are submitting your work to a publisher who requires separate PDF files of your figures, for example, because they cannot compile your images on their own machines.On the other hand, your former method
\input{}s the TikZ code directly. This has the advantage that you can readily manipulate the TikZ code if you need to, for whatever reason. If this is something that you need to do, you might wish to read about thebareBonesmethod thatTikZDeviceprovides. See pp. 12-15 of the documentation.