When I first started using an early port of S, the main way to create graphs was with the "printer" graphics device which created plots like this (back then that was impressive). S-PLUS does still have the printer graphics device to do things like this, but I don't think that anyone has ever implemented it for R (those with the skill don't have the desire). It has been discussed a couple of times in the past on this list, but I don't think it ever went very far.
The program gnuplot has support for a dumb terminal type of plotting that also creates this type of plot. There is a very crude interface between R and gnuplot in the TeachingDemos package (see ?gp.open). One approach would be to have R create the appropriate data (binning, quartiles, ...) and send that to gnuplot for plotting as text (this would require a separate download and install of gnuplot). -- Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D. Statistical Data Center Intermountain Healthcare [EMAIL PROTECTED] (801) 408-8111 > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Karl Ove Hufthammer > Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 8:39 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [R] Text-based graphics/plots > > When discussing statistics in e-mail based discussion groups, > or in newsgroups, it is sometimes useful to include simple, > text-based statistical graphics. Here is an example, a > histogram (only useful with a fixed-width font, obviously). > > > :..... > ..:::::::::. > .::::::::::::::: > ...::::::::::::::::::: > . . .........::::::::::::::::::::::::::......... > -------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---- > 465 480 495 510 525 540 > > Other useful plots would be boxplots, scatterplots (even > Trellis-like, with multiple panels), line plots, and perhaps > even levelplots. > > Does there exist a package containing such functions, or > perhaps a text-based output device? > > I already know about the 'stem' function, which is very > nicely implemented, BTW. Here is some sample output (normal > distribution, with decimal point at '|'). > > 46 | 8 > 47 | 123799 > 48 | 01222234456 > 49 | 001222333444678 > 50 | 1233334457788 > 51 | 00022556667778999 > 52 | 0112223 > 53 | 79 > 54 | 049 > > -- > Karl Ove Hufthammer > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.