>>>>> "JO" == Jari Oksanen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>>> on Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:42:24 +0300 writes:
JO> On Mon, 2007-10-15 at 15:25 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> >>>>> "ms" == marc schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> >>>>> on Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:20:16 +0200 (CEST) writes:
>>
ms> On Mon, 2007-10-15 at 10:30 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> >> Full_Name: Bob O'Hara
>> >> Version: 2.6.0
>> >> OS: Windows XP
>> >> Submission from: (NULL) (88.112.20.250)
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Using horizontal=TRUE with boxplot() confuses it as to what is an x-
or y-axis.
>> >> At least, xlim= and ylim= are the wrong way round, log="x" (or "y")
and xaxt=
>> >> work as expected, I haven't looked at anything else.
>> >>
>> >> Some code to see if you can reproduce the bug (or discover it's in my
head...):
>> >>
>> >> boxplot(count ~ spray, data = InsectSprays)
>> >>
>> >> # Try to change x-axis:
>> >> boxplot(count ~ spray, data = InsectSprays, xlim=c(0,50))
>> >>
>> >> # Plot horizontally:
>> >> boxplot(count ~ spray, data = InsectSprays, horizontal=TRUE)
>> >>
>> >> # Now try to change x-axis:
>> >> boxplot(count ~ spray, data = InsectSprays, horizontal=TRUE,
xlim=c(0,50))
>> >> # Changes y-axis!
>> >>
>> >> # Now try to change y-axis:
>> >> boxplot(count ~ spray, data = InsectSprays, horizontal=TRUE,
ylim=c(0,50))
>> >> # Changes x-axis!
>> >>
>> >> # Plot x-axis on log scale:
>> >> boxplot(count+1 ~ spray, data = InsectSprays, horizontal=TRUE,
log="x")
>> >> # Does indeed change x-axis
>> >>
>> >> # Don't add ticks on x-axis:
>> >> boxplot(count ~ spray, data = InsectSprays, horizontal=TRUE, xaxt="n")
>> >> # Works as expected.
>>
ms> Hi Bob,
>>
ms> No, it's not in your head. This is documented in ?bxp, which is the
ms> function that actually does the plotting for boxplot(). See the
ms> description of 'pars' in ?bxp:
>>
ms> "Currently, yaxs and ylim are used ââ¬ËÂalong the boxplotââ¬â¢,
i.e.,
ms> vertically, when horizontal is false, and xlim horizontally."
>>
ms> So essentially, the named 'x' and 'y' axes are rotated 90 degrees when
ms> you use 'horizontal = TRUE', rather than the vertical axis always being
ms> 'y' and the horizontal axis always being 'x'. This has been discussed on
ms> the lists previously.
>>
>> Yes; thank you, Marc.
>>
>> And the reason for this is very sensible I think:
>>
>> If you have a longish boxplot() or bxp() command,
>> and you just want to go from vertical to horizontal or vice
>> versa, it makes most sense just to have to change the
>> 'horizontal' flag and not having to see if there are other 'x*'
>> and or 'y*' arguments that all need to be changed as well.
>>
JO> Except that you must change xaxt/yaxt and log="x"/log="y" which do not
JO> follow the "along the box" logic, and behave differently than
JO> xlim/ylim.
JO> Nothing of this is fatal, but this probably needs more than one
JO> iteration to find which way each of the x* and y* arguments works.
Oops!! Thank you Jari, for the note.
What you describe is then very unfortunate, and I hadn't been
aware of that.
``of course'', making any change to consistency
would break existing code that consciously works with the
current mis-"designed" behavior.
But now I understand why we have the word "currently"
in the description mentioned above.
So given the help file, we should consider dropping the whole
``along the boxplot'' idea?
{{well, yes, we should drop "traditional graphics" and work with
grid-based graphical objects ("grob"s) that can be drawn
vertically or horizontally,
e.g., in lattice or (most probably) ggplot2
}}
Martin
______________________________________________
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
