[R] abbreviate or wrap dimname labels

[John Fox]

Dear Mark and Mike,

I had a chance to speak with Mike this afternoon, and he explained to me, so
politely that I almost missed it, that I hadn't read his posting very
carefully. Sorry for that.

Anyway, here's an alternative solution, which I think will meet Mike's
needs:

abbrev <- function(text, width=10, split=" "){
    if (is.list(text)) return(lapply(text, abbrev, width=width,
split=split)) 
    if (length(text) > 1)
        return(as.vector(sapply(text, abbrev, width=width, split=split)))
    words <- strsplit(text, split=split)[[1]]
    words <- ifelse(nchar(words) <= width, words, 
        abbreviate(words, minlength=width))
    words <- paste(words, collapse=" ")
    paste(strwrap(words, width=width), collapse="\n")
    }

> abbrev(lab) # Mike's example
$OccFather
[1] "Upper\nnonmanual" "Lower\nnonmanual" "Upper\nmanual"    "Lower\nmanual"

[5] "Farm"            

$OccSon
[1] "Upper\nnonmanual" "Lower\nnonmanual" "Upper\nmanual"    "Lower\nmanual"

[5] "Farm"            

> abbrev(labels) # Mark's example
 [1] "This is\na long\nlabel 1"  "This is\na long\nlabel 2" 
 [3] "This is\na long\nlabel 3"  "This is\na long\nlabel 4" 
 [5] "This is\na long\nlabel 5"  "This is\na long\nlabel 6" 
 [7] "This is\na long\nlabel 7"  "This is\na long\nlabel 8" 
 [9] "This is\na long\nlabel 9"  "This is\na long\nlabel 10"


I hope that this is more helpful than my original response.

John

--------------------------------
John Fox
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8S 4M4
905-525-9140x23604
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox 
-------------------------------- 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Marc Schwartz
> Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 12:30 PM
> To: Michael Friendly
> Cc: R-Help
> Subject: Re: [R] abbreviate or wrap dimname labels
> 
> On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 12:12 -0400, Michael Friendly wrote:
> > For a variety of displays (mosaicplots, barplots, ...) one 
> often wants 
> > to either abbreviate or wrap long labels, particularly when 
> these are 
> > made up of several words.
> > In general, it would be nice to have a function,
> > 
> > abbreviate.or.wrap <-
> >     function(x, maxlength=10, maxlines=2, split=" ") { }
> > 
> > that would take a character vector or a list of vectors, x, 
> and try to 
> > abbreviate or wrap them to fit approximately the maxlength and 
> > maxlines constraints, using the split argument to specify allowable 
> > characters to wrap to multiple lines.
> > 
> > For example, this two-way table has dimnames too long to be 
> displayed 
> > nicely in a mosaicplot:
> > 
> >  > library(catspec)
> >  > library(vcd)
> >  >
> >  > data(FHtab)
> >  > FHtab<-as.data.frame(FHtab)
> >  >
> >  > xtable <- xtabs(Freq ~ .,FHtab)
> >  > lab <- dimnames(xtable)
> >  > lab
> > $OccFather
> > [1] "Upper nonmanual" "Lower nonmanual" "Upper manual"    
> "Lower manual"
> > [5] "Farm"
> > 
> > $OccSon
> > [1] "Upper nonmanual" "Lower nonmanual" "Upper manual"    
> "Lower manual"
> > [5] "Farm"
> > 
> > abbreviate works here, but gives results that aren't very readable:
> > 
> >  > lapply(lab, abbreviate, 8)
> > $OccFather
> > Upper nonmanual Lower nonmanual    Upper manual    Lower 
> manual       Farm
> >       "Upprnnmn"      "Lwrnnmnl"      "Uppermnl"      "Lowermnl" 
> >    "Farm"
> > 
> > $OccSon
> > Upper nonmanual Lower nonmanual    Upper manual    Lower manual 
> >     Farm
> >       "Upprnnmn"      "Lwrnnmnl"      "Uppermnl"      "Lowermnl" 
> >    "Farm"
> > 
> > In a related thread, Marc Schwartz proposed a solution for wrapping 
> > labels, based on
> > 
> >  >short.labels <- sapply(labels, function(x) paste(strwrap(x,
> >                           10), collapse = "\n"), USE.NAMES = FALSE)
> > 
> > But, my attempt to use strwrap in my context gives a single 
> string for 
> > each set of dimension names:
> > 
> >  > stack.lab <-function(x) { paste(strwrap(x,10), collapse 
> = "\n") }  
> > > lapply(lab, stack.lab) $OccFather [1] 
> > 
> "Upper\nnonmanual\nLower\nnonmanual\nUpper\nmanual\nLower\nman
> ual\nFarm"
> > 
> > $OccSon
> > [1] 
> "Upper\nnonmanual\nLower\nnonmanual\nUpper\nmanual\nLower\nman
> ual\nFarm"
> > 
> > For my particular example, I can do what I want with gsub, 
> but it is 
> > hardly general:
> > 
> >  > lab[[1]] <- gsub(" ","\n", lab[[1]])
> >  > lab[[2]] <- lab[[1]]   # cheating: I know it's a square table
> >  > lab
> > $OccFather
> > [1] "Upper\nnonmanual" "Lower\nnonmanual" "Upper\nmanual" 
> > "Lower\nmanual"
> > [5] "Farm"
> > 
> > $OccSon
> > [1] "Upper\nnonmanual" "Lower\nnonmanual" "Upper\nmanual" 
> > "Lower\nmanual"
> > [5] "Farm"
> > 
> >  > dimnames(xtable) <- lab
> > 
> > Then,
> > mosaicplot(xtable, shade=TRUE)
> > gives a nice display!
> > 
> > Can anyone help with a more general solution for wrapping labels or 
> > abbreviate.or.wrap()?
> > 
> > thanks,
> > -Michael
> 
> 
> Michael,
> 
> This is not completely generic (I have not used abbreviate() 
> here) and it could take some further fine tuning and perhaps 
> even consideration of creating a generic method. However, a 
> possible solution to the problem of using my previous 
> approach on a list object and giving some flexibility to also 
> handle vectors:
> 
> 
> # Core wrapping function
> wrap.it <- function(x, len)
> {
>   sapply(x, function(y) paste(strwrap(y, len), 
>                         collapse = "\n"), 
>          USE.NAMES = FALSE)
> }
> 
> 
> # Call this function with a list or vector
> wrap.labels <- function(x, len)
> {
>   if (is.list(x))
>   {
>     lapply(x, wrap.it, len)
>   } else {
>     wrap.it(x, len)
>   }
> }
> 
> 
> 
> Thus, for your labels in a list:
> 
> > wrap.labels(lab, 10)
> $OccFather
> [1] "Upper\nnonmanual" "Lower\nnonmanual" "Upper\nmanual"   
> [4] "Lower\nmanual"    "Farm"            
> 
> $OccSon
> [1] "Upper\nnonmanual" "Lower\nnonmanual" "Upper\nmanual"   
> [4] "Lower\nmanual"    "Farm"   
> 
> 
> and for the example vector in my prior post:
> 
> > labels <- factor(paste("This is a long label ", 1:10))
> > wrap.labels(labels, 10)
>  [1] "This is\na long\nlabel 1"  "This is\na long\nlabel 2" 
>  [3] "This is\na long\nlabel 3"  "This is\na long\nlabel 4" 
>  [5] "This is\na long\nlabel 5"  "This is\na long\nlabel 6" 
>  [7] "This is\na long\nlabel 7"  "This is\na long\nlabel 8" 
>  [9] "This is\na long\nlabel 9"  "This is\na long\nlabel 10"
> 
> 
> To incorporate abbreviate() here, you could perhaps modify the
> wrap.labels() syntax to use a "wrap = TRUE/FALSE" argument to 
> explicitly
> indicate which approach you want, or perhaps develop some 
> decision tree
> approach to automate the process.
> 
> HTH,
> 
> Marc Schwartz
> 
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