Mar and Mgp: Set Plot Margins and Distances

Description

Plot margins are normally set by par("mar"). However one is forced to always define all margins, even if just one should be altered. The convenience function Mar() allows to set one single margin (or several) while leaving the others unchanged.

Mgp() does the same for the distances of axis title, labels and line.

Usage

Mar(bottom = NULL, left = NULL, top = NULL, right = NULL, outer = FALSE, 
    reset = FALSE)
Mgp(title = NULL, labels = NULL, line = NULL, reset = FALSE)

Arguments

bottom: the bottom margin, if set to NULL the current value will be maintained.
left: the left margin, if set to NULL the current value will be maintained.
top: the top margin, if set to NULL the current value will be maintained.
right: the right margin, if set to NULL the current value will be maintained.
outer: logical, defining if inner margins (par("mar")) or the outer margins (par("oma")) should be set. Default is FALSE, meaning that the inner margins will be concerned.
reset: if set to TRUE the margins are reset to the defaults (respecting outer). Other arguments are ignored.
title: margin line for the axis title (default 3)
labels: margin line for the axis labels (default 1)
line: margin line for the axis line (default 0)

Author

Andri Signorell <andri@signorell.net>

Details

Running Mar() without any arguments will return the current settings, either par("mar"), when outer is set to FALSE or par("oma") for outer = TRUE.

Examples

Run this code

# largen the left margin only
Mar(left=10.1)   # or as alternative: Mar(, 10.1)
Mgp(title=6)     # ylab must be placed a little further to the left
barplot(1:7, names=levels(d.pizza$driver), horiz=TRUE, las=1, 
        ylab="driver", col=Pal("Helsana"))