[R] graphics question: tilted axis labels?

[Charilaos Skiadas]

On Apr 13, 2007, at 9:52 AM, Christoph Heibl wrote:

> Dear Charilaos,
>
> Thanks ... your were right. I now get the names. But the problems  
> remains that the space (30 items) is insufficient to bear all the  
> names and I am still looking for a way to accommodate them. Do you  
> know of any solution?
>
Frankly, if you have a barplot with 30 items, I would rethink the  
situation if I were you. As an audience, I would find it hard to  
process such a graph. Put it might just be me.
I personally think that tilting them 45, or even 90 degrees is not a  
very good idea presentation-wise, and opt instead to have the  
barplots be horizontal when something like this happens (barplot 
(...,horiz=TRUE) ).
If you look at ?par, you'll find the options "crt" and "srt", which  
don't seem to work on the axes, and also have a big warning about not  
expecting a 45 degree tilt to always work. You can use "las" to turn  
it 90 degrees if you really want that.

I think lattice and grid would allow you perhaps to do exactly what  
you want, though it might be somewhat more work.

Sorry, perhaps I was more critical than helpful. Best of luck with it.

PS: Why do drawing commands have different names for the "horizontal"  
attribute?

boxplot -> horizontal
barplot -> horiz

> Cheers,
> Christoph
>
>
> On 13.04.2007, at 15:27, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:
>
>> # create data frame
>>   LA <- data.frame(countries=c("Chile", "Peru", "Bolivia"), values=c
>> (10, 12, 13), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
>> # call barplot
>> barplot(LA$values, names.arg=LA$countries)
>

Haris Skiadas
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Hanover College