This blog is updated daily.
A general description is here.
The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed
from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text
(including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the
new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter. This was done for consistency with
other devices such as ‘pdf()’.
‘R CMD build’ once again attempts to preserve file permissions on
Windows.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as
on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the
bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices
‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.
These are not compiled in by default when building from source: see the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.
All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument.
If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4.
If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are
used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based
devices.
This will generally be a Windows font name such as ‘"Lucida Bright"’ or one of the device-independent names (‘"sans"’, ‘"serif"’ and ‘"mono"’). Outside Western Europe you may need to select a family that better supports your locale such as ‘"Arial MS Unicode"’ or one specific to Chinese/Korean/Thai ....
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and
the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in
‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and
‘win.graph()’).
This gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is actually used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias = "cleartype")’ will make this the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
The ‘Update packages ...’ menu item now runs
‘update.packages(ask="graphics", checkBuilt=TRUE)’.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ preserves the package-directory modification time when
it restores an earlier install of the package.
File extensions ‘.xz’, ‘.rda’ and ‘.RData’ have been added to those
which default to binary transfer for ‘download.file()’.
‘install.packages()’ and ‘R CMD check’ have a small delay after
removing a directory to counteract some interference from anti-virus
software.
Compilation of C and Fortran code now uses the optimization flag
‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent
CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. Its effect
is particularly evident on 64-bit builds.
This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’ macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.
Where both 32- and 64-bit versions of R are installed, the file
association for @file.RData files defaults to 64-bit R (it defaulted to
32-bit in R 2.12.x and 2.13.x).
There is preliminary support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use
options ‘--m32’ or ‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the
appropriate macros in ‘MkRules.local’.
It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature enough.
‘Rzlib.dll’ (sometimes used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not
include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.
zip.unpack() (deprecated in R 2.13.0) is defunct: use ‘unzip()’
instead.
The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text (including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter. This was done for consistency with other devices such as ‘pdf()’.
‘R CMD build’ once again attempts to preserve file permissions on Windows.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices ‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.
These are not compiled in by default when building from source: see the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.
All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument. If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4. If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based devices.
This will generally be a Windows font name such as ‘"Lucida Bright"’ or one of the device-independent names (‘"sans"’, ‘"serif"’ and ‘"mono"’). Outside Western Europe you may need to select a family that better supports your locale such as ‘"Arial MS Unicode"’ or one specific to Chinese/Korean/Thai ....
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in ‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and ‘win.graph()’).
This gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is actually used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias = "cleartype")’ will make this the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
The ‘Update packages ...’ menu item now runs ‘update.packages(ask="graphics", checkBuilt=TRUE)’.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ preserves the package-directory modification time when it restores an earlier install of the package.
File extensions ‘.xz’, ‘.rda’ and ‘.RData’ have been added to those which default to binary transfer for ‘download.file()’.
‘install.packages()’ and ‘R CMD check’ have a small delay after removing a directory to counteract some interference from anti-virus software.
Compilation of C and Fortran code now uses the optimization flag ‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. Its effect is particularly evident on 64-bit builds.
This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’ macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.
Where both 32- and 64-bit versions of R are installed, the file association for @file.RData files defaults to 64-bit R (it defaulted to 32-bit in R 2.12.x and 2.13.x).
There is preliminary support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use options ‘--m32’ or ‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the appropriate macros in ‘MkRules.local’.
It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature enough.
‘Rzlib.dll’ (sometimes used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.
zip.unpack() (deprecated in R 2.13.0) is defunct: use ‘unzip()’ instead.