rworldmap (version 1.3-8)

addMapLegendBoxes: Add a legend of coloured boxes to a map

Description

Creates a colour box legend, showing the range of colours and the values the colours correspond to. This works well for categorical data with relatively few categories.

Usage

addMapLegendBoxes(
  cutVector = "",
  colourVector = "",
  x = "bottomleft",
  horiz = FALSE,
  title = "category",
  cex = 1,
  pt.cex = 2,
  col = "gray",
  bg = "white",
  legendText = "",
  catMethod = "categorical",
  plottedData = "",
  colourPalette = "heat",
  sigFigs = 2,
  missingCountryCol = "white",
  ...
)

Value

Adds a legend to a plot.

Arguments

cutVector

the categories or breaks used in the map

colourVector

colours used in the map

x

positioning of legend e.g. 'bottomleft', 'topright'

horiz

if TRUE horizontal legend

title

title for Legend

cex

controls the font size, default is 1

pt.cex

controls size of colour boxes relative to cex, default is 2

col

colour for boundary of colour boxes, default is "gray"

bg

colour for legend background, default is "white", NA makes the legend background transparent

legendText

the text to put against each legend box, if left blank cutVector is used, needs to be a vector the same length as length cutVector

catMethod

the categorisation method used influences what text added to legend elements, for 'categorical' just the category names are used for other options limits are used

plottedData

not used yet but maybe in future

colourPalette

not used yet but maybe in future

sigFigs

not used yet but maybe in future

missingCountryCol

not used yet but maybe in future

...

to allow other params to be set in legend

Author

Andy South

Details

This creates a legend with separate boxes of colour rather than addMapLegend() which creates a colour bar. This method is used as the default for categorical data.

See the examples for how to use a parameter list returned from mapping functions.

See Also

addMapLegend, mapCountryData, mapGriddedData

Examples

#Set up the plot so the world map uses the full width.
mapDevice() 
#map example categorical data with no legend              
mapParams <- mapCountryData(nameColumnToPlot='GEO3major'
              , catMethod='categorical'
              , addLegend='FALSE' 
              )
              
#add default legend using the same parameters as mapCountryData               
do.call( addMapLegendBoxes, c( mapParams))

#adding a modified legend by specifying extra parameters               
do.call( addMapLegendBoxes, c(mapParams,x='bottom',horiz=TRUE,title="Region"))

#user defined map colour sceme              
mapParams <- mapCountryData(nameColumnToPlot='GEO3major'
              , catMethod='categorical'
              , addLegend='FALSE'
              , colourPalette=c('white','green','red','yellow','blue','black') 
              )
#changing legendText
mapParams$legendText <- c('antarctic','africa','oceania'
                         ,'americas','s.asia','eurasia')              
do.call( addMapLegendBoxes, c(mapParams,x='bottom',title="Region",horiz=TRUE))

#or this way
#do.call( addMapLegendBoxes
#        , c(mapParams
#           ,list(legendText=c('antarctic','africa','oceania'
#                              ,'americas','s.asia','eurasia')
#                ,x='bottom',title="Region",horiz=TRUE)))