[BioC] Rotate xtick or ytick labels to any angle

[Alexander Ploner]

Dear Richard,

neither annHeatmap nor annHeatmap2, the two functions that generate 
annotated heatmaps in Heatplus, support rotated axis labels. This is 
simply because they use the underlying R base graphics routines 
(specifically the ?axis function) which do not provide this functionality.

Personally, if I run into very long row- or column labels that won't fit 
or overlap, I try one of the following:

1) shorten the labels: generally, shorter labels are more informative 
anyway; ?abbreviate or ?substr usually do the trick

2) expand space for labels: the labels-argument allows you to set the 
parameter nrow, which controls how much space is set aside for labels 
(default: 3); see ?annHeatmap2 and Figures 8 and 9 in the vignette 
annHeatmap.pdf

3) reduce the font size of the labels: this will generally do very 
little on its own, but it may help in conjunction with 1 or2; controlled 
via parameter cex of the labels-argument, see ?annHeatmap2

Hope this helps,

alexander




On 2013-02-26 05:25, Richard Hu [guest] wrote:
> Dear Dr. Ploner:
>       It would be great to be able to rotate  the xtick or ytick labels to any angle in your Heatplus package, which is very convenient when labels are long.
>       Thanks
>       Richard Hu
>
>   -- output of sessionInfo():
>
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 2.15.1 (2012-06-22)
> Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
>
> locale:
> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252
> [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
> [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>
> other attached packages:
> [1] Heatplus_2.4.0
>
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] tools_2.15.1
>
> --
> Sent via the guest posting facility at bioconductor.org.

-- 
Alexander Ploner
Medical Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Karolinsksa Institutet
www.meb.ki.se