[R] Problems with Treemaps in VCD & PORTFOLIO

[David Epstein]

Hi,

I am trying to create a treemap for a non-symmetric tree where some
branches have more sub-branches than others. I have tried tools in two
packages, but have encountered some problems that I hope more
experienced users on this list can help address. 

The PORTFOLIO package offers MAP.MARKET, but this provides only a single
depth of branching ("category") before rendering the leaves. I could
create combined-categories from multiple columns, but these would not be
nested--or even necessarily rendered close to each other. The "color"
option provides a similar workaround with similar shortcomings.

The VCD package offers MOSAIC, which may be flexible enough to be
tweaked into rendering treemaps. One problem that arises is the
rendering of empty cells as vertical or horizontal lines, which makes
reading the maps more difficult. Empty cells in my case do not convey
more information since they are rather intuitive. I would prefer not to
render them at all and use location, labeling, and color to make the
branching structure clear. Is this possible?

Are there other packages or options I should consider?


Thank you,
-david