SplitBarPlotAtomic: Atomic split bar plot (internal)

In plotthis: High-Level Plotting Built Upon 'ggplot2' and Other Plotting Packages

Atomic split bar plot (internal)

Description

Core implementation for drawing a split (divergent / waterfall-style) bar plot. Bars extend left (negative values) and right (positive values) from a central zero line, with the y-axis listing categories. Bars can be coloured by a categorical or continuous fill variable, and their opacity can encode an additional numeric variable via alpha_by.

This is the workhorse behind the exported SplitBarPlot (also aliased as WaterfallPlot).

Usage

SplitBarPlotAtomic(
  data,
  x,
  y,
  y_sep = "_",
  flip = FALSE,
  alpha_by = NULL,
  alpha_reverse = FALSE,
  alpha_name = NULL,
  order_y = list(`+` = c("x_desc", "alpha_desc"), `-` = c("x_desc", "alpha_asc")),
  bar_height = 0.9,
  lineheight = 0.5,
  max_charwidth = 80,
  fill_by = NULL,
  fill_by_sep = "_",
  fill_name = NULL,
  direction_name = "direction",
  direction_pos_name = "positive",
  direction_neg_name = "negative",
  theme = "theme_this",
  theme_args = list(),
  palette = "Spectral",
  palcolor = NULL,
  palreverse = FALSE,
  lower_quantile = 0,
  upper_quantile = 0.99,
  lower_cutoff = NULL,
  upper_cutoff = NULL,
  facet_by = NULL,
  facet_scales = "free_y",
  facet_nrow = NULL,
  facet_ncol = NULL,
  facet_byrow = TRUE,
  aspect.ratio = 1,
  x_min = NULL,
  x_max = NULL,
  legend.position = "right",
  legend.direction = "vertical",
  title = NULL,
  subtitle = NULL,
  xlab = NULL,
  ylab = NULL,
  keep_empty = FALSE,
  keep_na = FALSE,
  ...
)

Arguments

data	A data frame.
x	A character string specifying the numeric column for the x-axis. Values determine bar direction: positive → right, negative → left.
y	A character string (or vector) specifying the column(s) for the category axis. Each unique value becomes a bar. Multiple columns are concatenated with y_sep.
y_sep	A character string to join multiple y columns. Default "_".
flip	Logical; if TRUE, swap the x and y axes (bars become vertical rather than horizontal).
alpha_by	A character string naming a numeric column to encode as bar opacity. Default NULL (all bars fully opaque).
alpha_reverse	Logical; if TRUE, reverse the alpha scale direction (solid for low values, transparent for high).
alpha_name	A character string for the alpha legend title.
order_y	A named list controlling the vertical ordering of bars. Keys are "+" (positive bars), "-" (negative bars), or "*" (all bars). Values are character vectors of ordering criteria: "x_asc", "x_desc", "alpha_asc", "alpha_desc". Default orders positive bars by descending x and descending alpha; negative bars by descending x and ascending alpha.
bar_height	A numeric value (0–1) specifying the bar height as a fraction of the available category slot.
lineheight	A numeric value controlling the line height of wrapped category labels.
max_charwidth	An integer specifying the maximum character width for wrapping category labels.
fill_by	A character string (or vector) naming the column(s) for bar fill colour. If NULL, the direction (positive/negative) is used. Can be categorical or numeric.
fill_by_sep	A character string to join multiple fill_by columns. Default "_".
fill_name	A character string for the fill legend title.
direction_name	A character string naming the internal direction column (used in legends). Default "direction".
direction_pos_name	A character string labelling the positive direction in the legend. Default "positive".
direction_neg_name	A character string labelling the negative direction in the legend. Default "negative".
theme	A character string or a theme class (i.e. ggplot2::theme_classic) specifying the theme to use. Default is "theme_this".
theme_args	A list of arguments to pass to the theme function.
palette	A character string specifying the palette to use. A named list or vector can be used to specify the palettes for different split_by values.
palcolor	A character string specifying the color to use in the palette. A named list can be used to specify the colors for different split_by values. If some values are missing, the values from the palette will be used (palcolor will be NULL for those values).
palreverse	A logical value indicating whether to reverse the palette. Default is FALSE.
lower_quantile, upper_quantile	Lower and upper quantiles for the continuous color/fill scale. The actual cutoffs are determined by these quantiles when lower_cutoff and upper_cutoff are NULL. Defaults: lower_quantile = 0, upper_quantile = 0.99.
lower_cutoff, upper_cutoff	Explicit lower and upper cutoffs for the continuous color/fill scale. When NULL (the default), the cutoffs are determined by lower_quantile and upper_quantile via quantile. Values outside the [lower_cutoff, upper_cutoff] range are clamped (winsorized) to the nearest cutoff value.
facet_by	A character string specifying the column name of the data frame to facet the plot. Otherwise, the data will be split by split_by and generate multiple plots and combine them into one using patchwork::wrap_plots
facet_scales	Whether to scale the axes of facets. Default is "fixed" Other options are "free", "free_x", "free_y". See ggplot2::facet_wrap
facet_nrow	A numeric value specifying the number of rows in the facet. When facet_by is a single column and facet_wrap is used.
facet_ncol	A numeric value specifying the number of columns in the facet. When facet_by is a single column and facet_wrap is used.
facet_byrow	A logical value indicating whether to fill the plots by row. Default is TRUE.
aspect.ratio	A numeric value specifying the aspect ratio of the plot.
x_min, x_max	Numeric limits for the x-axis. When NULL, symmetric limits are computed from the maximum absolute x-value.
legend.position	A character string specifying the position of the legend. if waiver(), for single groups, the legend will be "none", otherwise "right".
legend.direction	A character string specifying the direction of the legend.
title	A character string specifying the title of the plot. A function can be used to generate the title based on the default title. This is useful when split_by is used and the title needs to be dynamic.
subtitle	A character string specifying the subtitle of the plot.
xlab	A character string specifying the x-axis label.
ylab	A character string specifying the y-axis label.
keep_empty	One of FALSE, TRUE and "level". It can also take a named list to specify different behavior for different columns. Without a named list, the behavior applies to the categorical/character columns used on the plot, for example, the x, group_by, fill_by, etc. FALSE (default): Drop empty factor levels from the data before plotting. TRUE: Keep empty factor levels and show them as a separate category in the plot. "level": Keep empty factor levels, but do not show them in the plot. But they will be assigned colors from the palette to maintain consistency across multiple plots. Alias: levels
keep_na	A logical value or a character to replace the NA values in the data. It can also take a named list to specify different behavior for different columns. If TRUE or NA, NA values will be replaced with NA. If FALSE, NA values will be removed from the data before plotting. If a character string is provided, NA values will be replaced with the provided string. If a named vector/list is provided, the names should be the column names to apply the behavior to, and the values should be one of TRUE, FALSE, or a character string. Without a named vector/list, the behavior applies to categorical/character columns used on the plot, for example, the x, group_by, fill_by, etc.
...	Additional arguments.

Value

A ggplot object, possibly faceted, with height and width attributes (in inches) attached.

Architecture

1. Column resolution — x, y, fill_by, alpha_by, and facet_by are validated via check_columns. Multi-column y and fill_by are concatenated with their respective separators.

2. Direction assignment — a direction_name column is created from the sign of x, assigning each row to the positive or negative group (customisable via direction_pos_name / direction_neg_name).

3. Fill resolution — if fill_by is NULL, the direction column is used as the fill (two-colour palette). Categorical fills use a discrete colour scale; numeric fills use prepare_continuous_color_scale() with quantile / cutoff clamping and scale_fill_gradientn().

4. Alpha by — when alpha_by is provided, bar opacity encodes an additional numeric variable via scale_alpha_continuous().

5. Ordering — order_y is a named list controlling the vertical ordering of bars. The keys "+" and "-" specify separate orderings for positive and negative bars; key "*" applies a single ordering to all bars. Values are character vectors of ordering criteria: "x_asc", "x_desc", "alpha_asc", "alpha_desc".

6. Empty level padding — when keep_empty_y = TRUE, missing y-levels are padded per facet (or globally) with zero-height bars so they still appear on the axis.

7. Text labels — category names are drawn beside the bars via geom_text() at the zero line. When flipped, labels are rotated 90°. Long labels are wrapped via str_wrap() using max_charwidth.

8. Plot assembly — the ggplot is built with geom_vline(xintercept = 0) for the centre line, geom_col() for bars, and the appropriate fill / alpha scales.

9. Dimension calculation — calculate_plot_dimensions() computes dimensions from the number of y categories, scaled by bar_height / 4. Flipping adjusts the aspect ratio.

10. Faceting — facet_plot() wraps the result, defaulting to facet_scales = "free_y".

plotthis documentation built on July 9, 2026, 5:07 p.m.