If I'm being honest this whole post seems like something an immature person trolling a message board would post, so I hope that is not the case.
As a 12 year SAS programming veteran who specializes in making graphics I would strongly disagree with everything you have said. I don't know if you're sticking to really old graph procedures like PROC PLOT or something, but SAS has been extensively increasing their graphing capabilities over the last decade starting in SAS version 9.2 with the SG procedures. Not only do they take feedback from the community on here and at conferences to create new plotting statements (TEXT and AXIS plots to name a couple), but they gave us access to the code behind the code with the Graph Template Language so you can create basically anything you want. I've even been able to design CIRCOS, SANKEY, and other types of graphs that SAS does not have statements for currently using some basic math and programming. Since SAS 9.3 all those years ago they have been able to output scalable vector graphics that are editable (PDF documents editable with Illustrator or Adobe Acrobat Pro, EMF that are editable in PowerPoint, and even PS files). I have never had to go to R to make any graph that we send to publication.
If you prefer the style of coding R has then I would go to R. It's object oriented which is completely different than SAS, and the open sourced nature requires a lot of trust in the contributors that they are being accurate under the hood. I can spend hours in R just trying to figure out which package I should use and how to even use it because of the terrible documentation and horrible error messaging. I have no idea how I would make a Kaplan-Meier curve to the same quality my %NEWSURV macro does using R instead or which package I'd even start with since R can't plot text tables worth anything.
Again, I hope you are not being a troll on this forum. Next time I suggest asking question about how to do something with SAS graphics instead of assuming it can't and going to R.
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