showtext and RStudioGD

[jolars]

showtext does not work with RStudio's built-in graphics device, despite working flawlessly with windows(). It might for example look like this:

This is a known issue, but has not yet been fixed.

[yixuan]

I guess it's a bit complicated. RStudio's internal graphics device actually consists of two devices: one used to fast preview and the other for the real rendering of graphics. showtext can only affect one of them which results in the failure of using showtext.

[jolars]

I see, that's too bad. Can you think of any solution or should I close this down?

[yixuan]

I would keep it as an open issue, which reminds me of this problem. 😄

[benjaminrobinson]

Any update on this issue?

[yixuan]

@benjaminrobinson I apologize for my non-response. I haven't found a way to solve this issue yet, so you still need to manually open new graphics devices to make showtext work.

[yixuan]

Hi All,

I just figured out a workaround for this issue. The solution is actually simple: before you create plots, run the following code in the RStudio session:

trace(grDevices::png, exit = quote({
    showtext::showtext_begin()
}), print = FALSE)

Note that this will enable showtext for the RStudio graphics device even if you haven't called showtext_auto(). To turn off, use

untrace(grDevices::png)

Please let me know if this works for you.

[yixuan]

The new version (0.9) has already solved this issue.