Some Notes on Lattice Themes

• show.settings is very useful for seeing the current settings and the effect of changes.
• You can save the current theme with

  current.theme <- trellis.par.get()
  

• standard.theme produces the old default with gray backgrounds and the like.
• canonical.theme(color=FALSE) produced the black and white theme used for the Lattice book.
• You can change the theme for the current device with

  trellis.device(theme = newtheme, new = FALSE)
  

• The theme can be set for an entire session by adding something this to .First():

  lattice.options(lattice.theme = newtheme)
  

• The theme for a single high level lattice call can be set using the par.settings argument:

  dotplot(variety ~ yield | site, barley,
          layout = c(1, 6), aspect = c(0.7),
          groups = year, auto.key = list(space = 'right'),
          par.settings = canonical.theme(color=FALSE)) 
  

• The simpleTheme function is useful for minor theme modifications:

  dotplot(variety ~ yield | site, barley,
          layout = c(1, 6), aspect = c(0.7),
          groups = year, auto.key = list(space = 'right'),
          par.settings = simpleTheme(pch=16))