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I use the "save_plot" syntax to save the model plot. It seems like the "lambda" (loadings) symbol cannot be properly rendered. I attached two examples. One is in PNG form and another one is a screenshot from PDF. The symbol "lambda" (loadings) is appropriately displayed in R though.

I provide the code that I use to run the model. I would like to note that these two items were a product of "knit" in rmarkdown. The data used was the mobi dataset

measurements <- constructs(
  composite("Image",         multi_items("IMAG", 1:5)),
  composite("Expectation",   multi_items("CUEX", 1:3)),
  composite("Satisfaction",  multi_items("CUSA", 1:3)),
  composite("Complaints",    single_item("CUSCO")),
  composite("Loyalty",       multi_items("CUSL", 1:3))
)

structural <- relationships(
  paths(from = "Image",            to = c("Expectation", "Satisfaction")),
  paths(from = "Expectation",      to = c("Satisfaction", "Complaints")),
  paths(from = "Satisfaction",     to = "Complaints"), 
  paths(from = "Complaints",       to = "Loyalty")
)

# estimating the model
model_mobi <- estimate_pls(
  data = mobi,
  measurement_model = measurements,
  structural_model = structural
)

# bootstrapping the model
boot_model_mobi <- bootstrap_model( seminr = model_mobi,
                                  nboot = 1000, cores = 2
)

plot(boot_model_mobi, title = "Bootstrapped Model")
save_plot("mymodel.pdf")

@francischuah I regret to say that I cannot reproduce the issue. The saved PDF file renders the greek letters well for me.

Could I ask you to run the code again and afterwards run sessionInfo()? Please report the results here.

My results, for example, are:

R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin17.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Big Sur 11.4

Matrix products: default
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.1/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] seminr_2.1.0

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] Rcpp_1.0.6         rsvg_2.1.2         visNetwork_2.0.9   digest_0.6.27     
 [5] V8_3.4.2           DiagrammeRsvg_0.1  jsonlite_1.7.2     magrittr_2.0.1    
 [9] rlang_0.4.11       curl_4.3.1         rstudioapi_0.13    DiagrammeR_1.0.6.1
[13] RColorBrewer_1.1-2 tools_4.1.0        glue_1.4.2         htmlwidgets_1.5.3 
[17] yaml_2.2.1         parallel_4.1.0     compiler_4.1.0     htmltools_0.5.1.1 

I'm wondering if there is an issue with how encodings are set on your machine.

@Sumidu bringing this to your attention as well.

@soumyaray

A brief checking suggest that perhaps it is my locale i.e. encoding as you mentioned

R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19041)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_Malaysia.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_Malaysia.1252    LC_MONETARY=English_Malaysia.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C                      LC_TIME=English_Malaysia.1252    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] seminr_2.1.0

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] Rcpp_1.0.6         rsvg_2.1.2         visNetwork_2.0.9   digest_0.6.27      V8_3.4.2           DiagrammeRsvg_0.1  jsonlite_1.7.2     magrittr_2.0.1     rlang_0.4.11      
[10] curl_4.3.1         rstudioapi_0.13    DiagrammeR_1.0.6.1 RColorBrewer_1.1-2 tools_4.1.0        glue_1.4.2         htmlwidgets_1.5.3  yaml_2.2.1         parallel_4.1.0    
[19] compiler_4.1.0     htmltools_0.5.1.1 

I think this may be due to how Windows uses a different encoding for symbols.

Until we have a fix, you can set the plot.specialcharacters variable in the theme to FALSE. SEMinR will then spell out "lambda" instead of using the symbol. Here's how you do it:

thm <- seminr_theme_create(plot.specialcharacters = FALSE)
plot(model, theme = thm)

Hope this helps 🙂

You could also try to enforce UTF-8 encoding by calling options(encoding = 'UTF-8') in the setup chunk.

Thank you for the quick reply.

@Sumidu where should be encoding options be specified precisely? (not sure which setup chunk)

@francischuah did you get this working?

@francischuah did you get this working?

Hi Prof Soumya, i use the plot.specialcharacters as suggested. It seems like this has been a common problem in Rstudio

Thanks @francischuah -- I'm guessing its because non-UTF8 encoding is less supported nowadays.

@Sumidu you can decide whether to close this issue (or perhaps add to the documentation)

I am experiencing the same or similar issue. The lambda character renders fine in the RStudio but does not render with save_plot().

I am not very familiar with character encoding, but since I am in the United States and my encoding indicates UTF-8, I don't think this is the issue. I set my options to options(encoding = 'UTF-8') and this did not fix the issue.

Thank you for the workaround with plot.specialcharacters though, this will help me for now.

In my case if I use

library(DiagrammeRsvg)
library(xml2)
library(rsvg)
library(magrittr)
plot(pls_model) %>%
  export_svg() %>%
  charToRaw() %>%
  rsvg_pdf("graph.pdf")

then the lambda can't show but if i use

library(DiagrammeRsvg)
library(xml2)
library(rsvg)
library(magrittr)
plot(pls_model) %>%
  export_svg() %>%
  read_xml() %>%
  write_xml("graph.svg")

then lambda appear.

I started learning R since yesterday because there isn't a good alternative for this library in Python, so I couldn't pinpoint the specific problem.

Also, why can't we use the character '\U03B2'? Visually, it represents $\beta$, and in my case, it can be displayed. Since I'm not very familiar with R, after installing this library via conda, it seems that I don't have a direct way to modify the source code. Perhaps it would be better to provide users with an interface to modify the character to be used?

R version 4.3.3 (2024-02-29)
Platform: x86_64-conda-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] C

time zone: America/Chicago
tzcode source: system (glibc)

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] DiagrammeRsvg_0.1 magrittr_2.0.3    rsvg_2.6.0        xml2_1.3.6       
[5] seminr_2.3.2     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] crayon_1.5.2       vctrs_0.6.5        cli_3.6.2          rlang_1.1.3       
 [5] jsonlite_1.8.8     glue_1.7.0         V8_4.4.2           htmltools_0.5.8.1 
 [9] IRdisplay_1.1      IRkernel_1.3.2     fansi_1.0.6        visNetwork_2.1.2  
[13] evaluate_0.23      fastmap_1.1.1      base64enc_0.1-3    lifecycle_1.0.4   
[17] DiagrammeR_1.0.11  compiler_4.3.3     RColorBrewer_1.1-3 htmlwidgets_1.6.4 
[21] Rcpp_1.0.12        rstudioapi_0.16.0  pbdZMQ_0.3-11      digest_0.6.35     
[25] repr_1.1.7         utf8_1.2.4         pillar_1.9.0       curl_5.1.0        
[29] uuid_1.2-0         tools_4.3.3       

It's my sessionInfo() for you to reproduce my environment.

@francischuah @JakeNel28 Can your problem also be solved using my method above? If so, I can take some time to investigate how to fix this bug when I have the opportunity (although it may not be too soon).