R devel - Mar 2006 - [R] dotchart: Gap between text and chart (PR#8681)

(Moved from r-help)

On 3/13/2006 9:33 AM, Dietrich Trenkler wrote:
> I have some data which I would like to display with dotchart. The
> labels are very long, so the chart becomes too small. Setting cex=0.7
> seems to be a good compromise, but the gap between the text and the
> chart still is too large. I did not find a "gap" parameter in the
> description of dotchart...
> 
> Thanks for any help.
> 
> D. Trenkler
> 
> 
> "a" <- structure(c(103.35, 36.73, 55.09, 302.66, 68.54, 35.46,
>     138.65, 25.21, 110.85, 6.66, 46.57, 70.23), .Names = 
> c("Nahrungsmittel und alkoholfreie Getraenke",
>     "Alkoholische Getraenke, Tabakwaren", "Bekleidung und
Schuhe",
>     "Wohnungsmieten, Energie",
"Einrichtungsgegenstaende",
> "Gesundheitspflege",
>     "Verkehr", "Nachrichtenuebermittlung",
"Freizeit, Unterhaltung  und
> Kultur",
>     "Bildungswesen", "Beherbergungs und
Gaststaettendienstleistungen",
>     "Andere Waren und Dienstleistungen"))
> 
> dotchart(sort(a))
> dotchart(sort(a),cex=0.7)
I've determined that this is a bug in dotchart.  It miscalculates the 
height of a line of text in the right margin, using

  lheight <- strheight("M", "inch")

which doesn't give the right answer.  You get the correct answer in this 
case by putting

  lheight <- par("mai")[2]/par("mar")[2]

but that's not a general solution, as the denominator may be zero.

I'll look for a better solution.

Duncan Murdoch

On Mon, 13 Mar 2006, murdoch at stats.uwo.ca wrote:
> (Moved from r-help)
>
> On 3/13/2006 9:33 AM, Dietrich Trenkler wrote:
>> I have some data which I would like to display with dotchart. The
>> labels are very long, so the chart becomes too small. Setting cex=0.7
>> seems to be a good compromise, but the gap between the text and the
>> chart still is too large. I did not find a "gap" parameter in
the
>> description of dotchart...
>>
>> Thanks for any help.
>>
>> D. Trenkler
>>
>>
>> "a" <- structure(c(103.35, 36.73, 55.09, 302.66, 68.54,
35.46,
>>     138.65, 25.21, 110.85, 6.66, 46.57, 70.23), .Names >>
c("Nahrungsmittel und alkoholfreie Getraenke",
>>     "Alkoholische Getraenke, Tabakwaren", "Bekleidung
und Schuhe",
>>     "Wohnungsmieten, Energie",
"Einrichtungsgegenstaende",
>> "Gesundheitspflege",
>>     "Verkehr", "Nachrichtenuebermittlung",
"Freizeit, Unterhaltung  und
>> Kultur",
>>     "Bildungswesen", "Beherbergungs und
Gaststaettendienstleistungen",
>>     "Andere Waren und Dienstleistungen"))
>>
>> dotchart(sort(a))
>> dotchart(sort(a),cex=0.7)
>
> I've determined that this is a bug in dotchart.  It miscalculates the
> height of a line of text in the right margin, using
>
>  lheight <- strheight("M", "inch")
>
> which doesn't give the right answer.  You get the correct answer in
this
> case by putting
>
>  lheight <- par("mai")[2]/par("mar")[2]
>
> but that's not a general solution, as the denominator may be zero.
>
> I'll look for a better solution.
Like setting mai not mar?  The ratio is par("csi"), by the way.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595