[cairo] No fonts control on Cairo in batch mode

[M Joonas Pihlaja]

Hi Christian,

On Thu, 16 Dec 2010, Christian Kamenik wrote:

> I am using Cairo version 1.4-5 for plotting graphs from within R on a Gentoo
> system that does not have X11 installed. I have full control on the fonts when
> running R in interactive mode. But when running R in batch mode I cannot
> change e.g. font size. Letters (including symbols) are, however, drawn.

This really seems like an R question to me rather than a cairo one,
but as far as cairo goes, you may be able to have some influence over
font selections by tweaking your personal fontconfig file
~/.fonts.conf:

http://www.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig-user.html

Depending on how R selects fonts this might actually work, but I still
think you'll have better control if you can tell R about your choices
directly.

You mention that you're using a custom compiled cairo rather than the
system one and that you're pointing R to it using various environment
variables.  Are you doing this because R doesn't work with the system
cairo at all?  It's not clear to me what relevance that has to your
problem with fonts.

Cheers,

Joonas