R help - May 2011 - Formatting names.arg

I am making a barplot using barplot2 from gplots and would like to  
format the names of my categorical variables (tree species) on the x- 
axis so that the genus name is above the species name (to save room).  
My code so far is:

speciesnames<-c("Dialium guianensis", "Inga alba",
"Tachigali
versicolor", "Brosimum utile", "Caryocar costaricense",
"Castilla
tunu", "Otoba novagranatensis", "Pourouma bicolor",
"Socratea
exorrhiza")
barplot2(meanapAprilactivity, names.arg=speciesnames, col=columncolor,  
xlab="Species", ylab="Soil acid phosphatase activity
(nmol/h/g)",
plot.ci=T, ci.l=apAprilminusordered, ci.u=apAprilplusordered,  
cex.lab=1.5)

For example, I want 'Dialium' to be located above 'guianensis'
on the
x-axis. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks,

Adrienne Keller


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On May 23, 2011, at 3:13 PM, Adrienne Keller wrote:
> I am making a barplot using barplot2 from gplots and would like to  
> format the names of my categorical variables (tree species) on the x- 
> axis so that the genus name is above the species name (to save room).  
> My code so far is:
> 
> speciesnames<-c("Dialium guianensis", "Inga alba",
"Tachigali
> versicolor", "Brosimum utile", "Caryocar
costaricense", "Castilla
> tunu", "Otoba novagranatensis", "Pourouma
bicolor", "Socratea
> exorrhiza")
> barplot2(meanapAprilactivity, names.arg=speciesnames, col=columncolor,  
> xlab="Species", ylab="Soil acid phosphatase activity
(nmol/h/g)",
> plot.ci=T, ci.l=apAprilminusordered, ci.u=apAprilplusordered,  
> cex.lab=1.5)
> 
> For example, I want 'Dialium' to be located above
'guianensis' on the
> x-axis. Is there a way to do this?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Adrienne Keller

Hi,

Just replace the space between the names with a newline character
('\n'):

  barplot(1:9, names.arg = gsub(" ", "\\\n", speciesnames), 
          cex.names = 0.5)

That will put the labels on two lines.

See ?gsub and note that I used 3 '\' preceding the 'n'.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz

Adrienne Keller <adrienne.keller <at> umontana.edu> writes:
> I am making a barplot using barplot2 from gplots and would like to  
> format the names of my categorical variables (tree species) on the x- 
> axis so that the genus name is above the species name (to save room).  
> My code so far is:
[snip]


  Try "Dialium\nguianensis" etc. ?