smallPlot: Inset small plot within figure

Description

multipanel-compatible inset plot with margins, background and border Adding points after smallPlot is called may be incorrect if the original function messes with the graph margins, see the note in colPointsLegend.

Usage

smallPlot(
  expr,
  x1 = 0.05,
  x2 = 0.7,
  y1 = 0.5,
  y2 = 1,
  outer = FALSE,
  xpd = NA,
  mar = c(3, 3, 1, 1),
  mgp = c(1.8, 0.8, 0),
  bg = par("bg"),
  border = par("fg"),
  las = 1,
  resetfocus = TRUE,
  colwise = FALSE,
  ...
)

Value

parameters of small plot, invisible.

Arguments

expr: expression creating a plot. Can be code within curly braces.
x1, x2, y1, y2: Position of small plot, relative to current figure region [0:1]. DEFAULT: x: 0.05-0.7, y: 0.5-1
outer: Logical. Should inset plot be placed in the device outer margin region instead of relative to the current figure region? Useful in multipanel plots with par(oma). outer here does not have exactly the same meaning as in title. DEFAULT: FALSE
xpd: Plotting and notation clipped to plot region (if xpd=FALSE), figure region (TRUE) or device region (xpd=NA). DEFAULT: NA
mar: Margin vector in (approximate) number of lines. It is internally multiplied with strheight to convert it to relative units [0:1], thus the behaviour is a bit different from par(mar). It's recycled, so you can use mar=0. DEFAULT: c(3,3,1,1)
mgp: MarGinPlacement: distance of xlab/ylab, numbers and line from plot margin, as in par, but with different defaults. DEFAULT: c(1.8, 0.8, 0)
bg: Background. DEFAULT: par("bg")
border: Border around inset plot. DEFAULT: par("fg")
las: LabelAxisStyle. DEFAULT: 1
resetfocus: Reset focus to original plot? Specifies where further low level plot commands are directed to. DEFAULT: TRUE
colwise: Logical: Continue next plot below current plot? If you had par(mfcol=...), you must use colwise=TRUE, otherwise the next plot will be to the right of the current plot (as with par(mfrow=...)). DEFAULT: FALSE
...: further arguments passed to par. This may mess things up - please tell me for which arguments! You can do par(las=1, las=2) (the last will be set), so smallPlot(plot(1), new=FALSE) works, but may not yield the intended result.

Warning

setting mai etc does not work!

Author

Berry Boessenkool, berry-b@gmx.de, 2014-2016

Examples

Run this code


# Basic usage:
op <- par(no.readonly=TRUE) # original parameters
plot(1:10)
smallPlot(plot(5:1, ylab="Yo man!"), bg="lightgreen" )
smallPlot(plot(5:1), x1=0.5,x2=1, y1=0.3,y2=0.6, bg="yellow", yaxt="n")
# if R warns "figure margins too large", try dragging the plot viewer bigger

# select focus for further add-on's:
points(2, 2, pch="+", cex=2, col=2) # main window
smallPlot( plot(5:1), bg="lightblue", resetfocus=FALSE )
mtext("dude")
points(2, 2, pch="+", cex=2, col=2) # smallPlot window
par(op)

# More par settings:
plot(1:10)
smallPlot( plot(50:1), bg=6, mai=c(0.2, 0.3, 0.1, 0.1)) # screws up
smallPlot( plot(5:1), bg=8, ann=FALSE)
smallPlot(plot(10:50), bg="transparent") # old plot is kept

# complex graphics in code chunks:
plot(1:100)
smallPlot( {plot(5:1, ylab="Rocky label"); lines(c(2,4,3));
            legend("topright", "BerryRocks!", lwd=3)    }, bg="white")


# multiple figure situations
par(op)
par(mfcol=c(3,4))
plot(1:10)
plot(1:10)
smallPlot(plot(5:1), bg="lightblue")
plot(1:10)
smallPlot(plot(5:1), bg="bisque", colwise=TRUE) # if mfcol (not mfrow) was set
plot(1:10)

# Outer margins (e.g. to add legends to multi-panel plots)
par(op)
par(mfrow=c(3,2), oma=c(0,5,0,0), mar=c(0,0,1,0)+0.5)
for(i in 0:5*4) image(volcano+i, zlim=c(90,200), xaxt="n", yaxt="n",
                      main=paste("volcano +", i))
smallPlot(plot(1:10), x1=0,x2=0.25, y1=0.5,y2=1, bg="green", mar=1)
smallPlot(plot(1:10), x1=0,x2=0.25, y1=0.5,y2=1, bg="green", mar=1, outer=TRUE)
colPointsLegend(90:200, horizontal=FALSE, x1=0, col=heat.colors(12), outer=TRUE,
               labelpos=5, density=FALSE, title="", cex=2, lines=FALSE)


# Further testing with mfrow and mfcol
par(op)
old_plt <- par("plt")
par(mfcol=c(3,4))
new_plt <- par("plt")
plot(1:10)
plot(1:10)
smallPlot(plot(5:1), bg="lightblue", colwise=TRUE)
points(3, 2, pch="+", cex=2, col=2)
plot(1:10) # canot keep mfcol, only mfrow, if colwise is left FALSE.
smallPlot(plot(5:1), bg="bisque", resetfocus=FALSE )
points(3, 2, pch="+", cex=2, col=2)
plot(1:10) # in smallPlot space
par(plt=old_plt)
plot(1:10) # too large
smallPlot(plot(5:1), bg="palegreen")
points(3, 2, pch="+", cex=2, col=2, xpd=NA) # not drawn with default xpd
par(plt=new_plt)
plot(1:10) # canot keep mfcol, only mfrow, if colwise is left FALSE.
smallPlot(plot(5:1), bg="yellow")
points(3, 2, pch="+", cex=2, col=2)   # everything back to normal
par(op)

# if layout is used instead of par(mfrow), it is difficult to add graphs
# after using smallPlot
lay <- matrix(c(1,1,1,1,2,2,3,3,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5), ncol=4)
layout.show(layout(lay))
layout(lay)
plot(1:10)
plot(1:10)
smallPlot(plot(1:10), mar=c(1,3,1,0), x1=0,x2=0.2, y1=0.2,y2=0.8, bg=4, outer=TRUE)
# plot(1:10) # now in a weird location (par("mfrow") is 4x4 after layout)

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