R help - May 2010 - Supercripting text

Dear R users,

I recently developed a plotting function in R and introduced it to my coworkers.
The function is designed to make plotting easier and more efficient, which will
in turn be more cost-effective for the company. The reviews for the function
have been positive thus far, except for one issue -- addition of superscripts to
the title. We need superscipts in the titles sometimes to highlight footnotes
which appear at the bottom of the plots.

The syntax for supersciprts, however, is rather cumbersome, especially in titles
since it needs to be bolded. So far the only way of superscripting is to use the
expression() function. But to go about formatting the text such that it appears
bolded as a title in my plots, I would have to type in the
command
> text(expression(bold(paste("text for
title",""^1)))....)
In some cases, the plot would require 3 footnotes to be shown, and the code
would be
> text(expression(bold(paste("text for title",""^1,
" "^2, " "^3))).....)
Most of my coworkers are still in the process of picking up R, some have never
used R before. The above commands may be a little too much for them to handle.

Is there an easier way of superscripting texts in R? It would be great if any of
you know of alternative ways other than using the expression() function.

I greatly appreciate your help.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Shang


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

You probably want to write your own titling function to add 
superscripts.  The following code will serve as a reasonable starting point:

# make the title expression
ourtitle <- function(title, footnotes=NULL) {
  if (length(footnotes) > 0) {
    fn <- paste(footnotes, collapse=' ')
    title <- eval(substitute(expression(bold(paste(title, ""^fn))),
list(fn=fn)))
  }
  title
}
# example with footnotes
tt <- ourtitle("stuff", 1:3)
plot(1, 1)
title(tt)
# example without footnotes
plot(1, 1)
title(ourtitle("stuff"))

Note that the only way I could make this work was to combine the 
footnote list before calling the eval-substitute-expression code; I 
cannot get it to work by applying things ot a list.

    Kevin

Shang Gao wrote:
> Dear R users,
>
> I recently developed a plotting function in R and introduced it to my
coworkers. The function is designed to make plotting easier and more efficient,
which will in turn be more cost-effective for the company. The reviews for the
function have been positive thus far, except for one issue -- addition of
superscripts to the title. We need superscipts in the titles sometimes to
highlight footnotes which appear at the bottom of the plots.
>
> The syntax for supersciprts, however, is rather cumbersome, especially in
titles since it needs to be bolded. So far the only way of superscripting is to
use the expression() function. But to go about formatting the text such that it
appears bolded as a title in my plots, I would have to type in the command
>   
>> text(expression(bold(paste("text for
title",""^1)))....)
>>     
>
> In some cases, the plot would require 3 footnotes to be shown, and the code
would be
>   
>> text(expression(bold(paste("text for title",""^1,
" "^2, " "^3))).....)
>>     
>
> Most of my coworkers are still in the process of picking up R, some have
never used R before. The above commands may be a little too much for them to
handle.
>
> Is there an easier way of superscripting texts in R? It would be great if
any of you know of alternative ways other than using the expression() function.
>
> I greatly appreciate your help.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Sincerely,
> Shang
>
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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