[Rd] mtext adj= wrong with several las= (PR#7188)

[Paul Murrell]

Hi


Uwe Ligges wrote:
> Paul Murrell wrote:
> 
>> Hi
>>
>>
>> Uwe Ligges wrote:
>>
>>> ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de wrote:
>>>
>>>> joehl at gmx.de wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Dear all,
>>>>> Our quite basic function mtext() does wrong adjustments in some 
>>>>> parameter
>>>>> configurations. This gets obvious when using multi line texts: 
>>>>> There is no
>>>>> way to properly adjust text perpendicular to axis 2, for example.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Jens Oehlschlägel
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> m <- matrix(1:9, 3)
>>>>> colnames(m) <- c("several\nlines", "several\nlines", "several\nlines")
>>>>>
>>>>> par(mfrow=c(2,2))
>>>>> barplot(m, horiz=TRUE, axes=FALSE, axisnames=FALSE, main="las=0 
>>>>> adj=0.5 is
>>>>> fine")
>>>>> mtext(colnames(m), 2, at=seq(0.5+0.2, by=1+0.2, length=3), las=0, 
>>>>> adj=0.5)
>>>>> barplot(m, horiz=TRUE, axes=FALSE, axisnames=FALSE, main="las=0 
>>>>> adj=1 is
>>>>> different")
>>>>> mtext(colnames(m), 2, at=seq(0.5+0.2, by=1+0.2, length=3), las=0, 
>>>>> adj=1)
>>>>> barplot(m, horiz=TRUE, axes=FALSE, axisnames=FALSE, main="las=1 
>>>>> adj=0.5 is
>>>>> NOT fine")
>>>>> mtext(colnames(m), 2, at=seq(0.5+0.2, by=1+0.2, length=3), las=1, 
>>>>> adj=0.5)
>>>>> barplot(m, horiz=TRUE, axes=FALSE, axisnames=FALSE, main="at las=1, 
>>>>> adj=1
>>>>> works the wrong direction", sub="no way to get adj=c(1, 0.5) with 
>>>>> las=1 (or
>>>>> 2)")
>>>>> mtext(colnames(m), 2, at=seq(0.5+0.2, by=1+0.2, length=3), las=1, 
>>>>> adj=1)
>>>>> par(mfrow=c(1,1))
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Left / right adjustemnt seems to be perfectly OK.
>>>> The thing that matters is centering "several lines" to the specified 
>>>> ("at=") location.
>>>> In fact, mtext() is not centering but bottom-aligning by adding a 
>>>> negative distance that looks OK for one line in the default font 
>>>> size, but not in most other cases.
>>>>
>>>> Hence this is the same as Paul Murrell's PR#1659 ("mtext() alignment 
>>>> of perpendicular text"). Fixing this, and/or improving mtext()'s 
>>>> "adj" argument to accept 2 dimensions is desirable, but might be not 
>>>> that easy... I'll take a look during the next days, but nothing 
>>>> promised.
>>>>
>>>> Uwe Ligges
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Having looked into the code, there are three possible solution (all with
>>> some drawbacks) I can see. Well, the current argument "adj" becomes
>>> "xadj" in the C sources (graphics.c, GMtext), and "yadj" is set to 0. 
>>> Hence the ugly hard coded LineBias of 0.3.
>>>
>>>
>>> Solutions
>>> =========
>>> 1: Hardcode "yadj" to 0.5 and remove all those 0.3 biases. Looks good 
>>> for axes, but it might break some code --> bad.
>>> On the other hand, GMMathText has hardcoded yadj=0.5. Is there a 
>>> problem with some special devices? Or any other reason not to center 
>>> stuff using "adj=0.5"?
>>>
>>> 2: Allow the typical 2-value adj, take the first as xadj, the second one
>>> as yadj. This might break some code, because currently adj of
>>> arbitrary length (!=0) is allowed and recycled.
>>>
>>> 3: Invent an argument "padj" for mtext() that represents adjustment
>>> *p*erpendicular to the text direction and gets mapped to "yadj" in
>>> GMtext. In that case the hardcoded 0.3 bias mentioned above can be
>>> removed. The question is whether to set the default to 0.5 (will still
>>> break code, but easily to fix by setting padj to 0).
>>>
>>> I'd like to propose the third solution and would be happy to provide a
>>> patch of GMText, including corresponding patches to GMMathText, as 
>>> well as mtext(), title() and axis() (and their inderlying do_* 
>>> components).
>>>
>>> Are there any objections? Any reasons not to do it?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> It hurts my head to think about this stuff.  There are so many 
>> combinations to worry about:
>> (i)   The las setting
>> (ii)  The axis (bottom, left, top, right)
>> (iii) Whether adj has been specified
>> (iv)  Whether the text is multi-line
>>
>> I think mtext() does ok as long as adj is not specified and the text 
>> is single-line.
> 
> 
> Unfortunately it does *not* (using axis() here for simplicity):
>   plot(1:10)
>   axis(3, cex.axis=5, las=2)


Good point :)


>> I would suggest addressing the multi-line problem for unspecified adj 
>> as a first step.  And I will definitely not mourn the passing of the 
>> 0.3 constant.  Setting yadj to 0.5 is not enough though because that 
>> doesn't make sense for multi-line text that is parallel to an axis (in 
>> that case, yadj should probably be 0 for axis 2 and 3 and 1 for axis 1 
>> and 4;  did I mention that there are lots of combinations to worry 
>> about?).
> 
> 
> I think most of the stuff is already quite pretty.
> The point is whether we are going to distinguish cases for 
> (p)adj={0,0.5,1} automatically or not. If the latter, we can omit 
> several of the cases mentioned above in (i)-(iv).
> I think - as the first step - we should set the default to center (note 
> that text() does so as well), and let the user change padj for 
> multi-line text as required.


I think the ideal would be to set padj automatically for multi-line text 
as well as single-line text (the current behaviour tries to set padj 
automatically for single-line text;  it's just not very good at it :).
But whatever first step is good;  then we can more easily discuss actual 
behaviour and code examples.


> I'll try to provide a collection of patches as a proposal within, say, 
> two weeks.


Great (modulo version scheduling issues discussed elsewhere).
Thanks Uwe!

Paul


>> For user-specified adj, I agree that a 2-value adj is not a good 
>> solution (adj is assumed to be horizontal adjustment) so maybe a padj 
>> would be best to allow user control of vertical alignment.
> 
>  >
> 
>> Paul
> 


-- 
Dr Paul Murrell
Department of Statistics
The University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland
New Zealand
64 9 3737599 x85392
paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/