[R] Degree symbol as axis label superscript

Andrew Simmons @kw@|mmo @end|ng |rom gm@||@com
Wed Dec 1 04:51:41 CET 2021


Using the degree character seems perfectly legit to me. The reason I
suggest looking at plotmath is that I think plotmath is easier to read
(that is, if you're escaping your characters with \u), and because for
anything more complicated like set notation, big sums, integrals, you'll
need to get used to plotmath to make your labels. Either way, nice
suggestion, both work perfectly well for this situation

On Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 16:24 Bert Gunter <bgunter.4567 using gmail.com> wrote:

> True, but unnecessary with UTF-8 encodings of unicode (subject to some
> caveats, though):
>
> plot(1:5, runif(5),xlab = "Temp (°F)", ylab = "result")
>
> should work fine, where the º ("degree") symbol was inserted by the
> symbol insertion facility on my Mac. Windows has something similar.
> See the comments in the plotmath documentation just before the
> examples for more details on this, along with some caveats about the
> need for a suitable display/plot device.
>
> More laboriously, but perhaps more informatively, one can look up
> "unicode code point for degree symbol" to find that it is decimal 176.
> Then R's intToUtf8() function converts this to the UTF-8 encoding that
> **should** display as a "degree" symbol, subject to the above
> referenced caveats.
> Hence:
> > intToUtf8(176)
> [1] "°"  ##degree character
>
> ## So, for example, you can do:
> > degrF <-paste0(intToUtf8(176),"F")
> > degrF
> [1] "°F" ("degrees F")
>
> > plot(1:5, runif(5),xlab = paste0("Temp (", degrF,")"), ylab = "result")
>
> As Andrew said, you can use plotmath to do this, too; it just isn't
> needed for simple insertion of "standard" symbols.
>
> NOTE: As I am far from an expert on all of this, I would appreciate
> clarification or correction of any errors or misstatements in the
> above.
>
> Bert Gunter
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 30, 2021 at 11:34 AM Andrew Simmons <akwsimmo using gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Excuse my brevity, but take a look at ?plotmath
> >
> > It has tons of tips for making pretty labels
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 14:05 Rich Shepard <rshepard using appl-ecosys.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > I want to present the temperature on the Y-axis label as 'Water
> Temperature
> > > (oC)' with the degree symbol as a superscript.
> > >
> > > My web search found a couple of methods; one put the entire example
> string
> > > in the axis label, the other is close, but still incorrect.
> > >
> > > Source example:
> > > #define expression with superscript
> > > x_expression <- expression(x^3 ~ variable ~ label)
> > > # The example axis label is:
> > > 'X3 variable label' (with the 3 as a superscript)
> > >
> > > My use:
> > > # Set degree symbol as superscript in plot's y axis:
> > > y_expression <- expression(^o ~ C)
> > >
> > > R's error message:
> > > Error in source("../scripts/all_temp_plots.r") :
> > >    ../scripts/all_temp_plots.r:10:28: unexpected '^'
> > > 9: # Set degree symbol as superscript in plot's y axis:
> > > 10: y_expression <- expression(^
> > >                                 ^
> > >
> > > What is the proper way to display a degree symbol in a plot's axis
> label?
> > >
> > > Rich
> > >
> > > ______________________________________________
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> > > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> > >
> >
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> >
> > ______________________________________________
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>

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