using Unicode 'dingbat-like' glyphs in R graphics, across devices & platforms, especially PDF

I think you are out of luck Ben, as, according to some notes by Paul Murrell, pdf() can only handle single-byte encodings. Multi-byte encodings need to be converted to a the single-byte equivalent, and therein lies the rub; by definition, single-byte encodings cannot contain all the glyphs that can be represented in a multi-byte encoding like UTF-8, say.

Paul's notes can be found here wherein he suggests a couple of solutions using Cairo-based PDF devices, using cairo_pdf() on suitably-endowed Linux and Mac OS systems, or via the Cairo package under MS Windows.

I have found the cairo_pdf device to be completely insufficient: the output is markedly different from both pdf and on-screen rendering, and its plotmath support is sketchy.

However, there’s a rather simple workaround on OS X: Use the “normal” quartz device and set its type to pdf:

quartz(type = 'pdf', file = 'output.pdf')

Unfortunately, on my computer this ignores the font family and always uses Helvetica (although the documentation claims that the default is Arial).

There are at least two other gotchas:

• pdf converts hyphens to minuses. This may not even always be what you want but it’s quite useful to properly typeset negative numbers. The linked thread describes workarounds for this.
• It’s of course platform specific and only works on OS X.

(I realise that OP briefly mentions the Quartz device but this thread is frequently viewed and I think this solution needs more prominence.)

Another solution might be to use tikzDevice which can now use XeLaTeX with Unicode characters. The resulting tex file can then be compiled to produce a pdf. The problem is still that you must have a font on your system that contains the characters.

library(tikzDevice)options(tikzXelatexPackages=c(getOption('tikzXelatexPackages'),    '\\setromanfont{Courier New}'))tikz(engine='xetex',standAlone=T)TestUnicode(9500,9900)dev.off()

The first time, this will take a LONG time.