README.md
In charlie-gallagher/ggunit: Utilies for graphic proportions

ggunit

The goal of ggunit is to provide a consistent experience with ggplot2 sizes, proportions, and units. The package is for now simple, but with a powerful philosophy that makes it easy to choose proportions and scaling for your graphic.

ggunit is not available on CRAN. You can install the development version of ggunit from GitHub:

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("charlie-gallagher/ggunit")

The central philosophy of the ggunit package is that the unit “lines” is the best design unit for data visualization proportions. One line is the height of a line of body text, for example the axis text. Since a primary goal of visualizations is to have readable text, lines are a natural unit of measurement.

Technically, ggunit asks for the text size and assumes that’s the height of 1 line. It doesn’t account for other factors like line spacing.

The function device_dimensions() helps you find the height and width (in inches) to pass to your graphics device.

It takes a height in lines of text, an aspect ratio, and the body text size (in points) and generates the correct units (in inches, by default) for height and width.

library(ggplot2)
library(ggunit)

dims <- device_dimensions(default_text = 11, 
                          height = 30, 
                          aspect_ratio = 16/9)

dims
#> $height
#> [1] 4.56621
#> 
#> $width
#> [1] 8.117707

The result is a list of length 2 with the requested dimensions. Text will appear smaller as the value of height increases. See examples below.

You can use the shortcut ggunit_save(), which is a thin wrapper around ggplot2::ggsave(), to quickly iterate on graphic proportions.

library(ggplot2)
library(ggunit)

my_plot <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = disp, y = mpg)) + 
  geom_point() + 
  theme_linedraw(base_size = 11)


# OPTION 1: Generate units, pass to device function
dims <- device_dimensions(
  default_text = 11,
  height = 30,
  aspect_ratio = 16/9
)

ggsave(
  plot = my_plot,
  filename = "~/Desktop/my_plot.png",
  height = dims$height,
  width = dims$width,
  dpi = 200
)


# OPTION 2: Do it all in one fell swoop
ggunit_save(
  plot = my_plot,
  filename = "~/Desktop/my_plot.png",
  dpi = 200,
  default_text = 11,
  height = 30,
  aspect_ratio = 16/9
)

For designs that are constrained by physical dimensions, ggunit provides a way to find the appropriate text size in points given physical dimensions and a desired proportion in lines, through text_dimensions().

text_dimensions(
    height = 5.5,
    units = "in",
    lines = 30
)
#> [1] 13

The text size is rounded to the nearest point by default. You can turn this off by setting the round argument to FALSE.

text_dimensions(
    height = 5.5,
    units = "in",
    lines = 30,
    round = FALSE
)
#> [1] 13.2495

Aligning text sizes in ggplot can be painful. The two main places you see text sizes are in geom_text() for plotting text and element_text() for adjusting theme elements.

The problem is that geom_text uses millimeters for the size argument, and element_text uses points. The ggplot2 package provides the .pt constant, which is the number of points in 1 mm.

ggunit generalizes this with the mm() function, which converts from (almost) any unit available with grid::unit() to millimeters. The default is “pt” since this is the main use case.

default_text <- 11               # Text size in points

default_text / ggplot2::.pt      # Converted to millimeters
#> [1] 3.866058
mm(default_text, "pt")           # Same, but more intuitive
#> [1] 3.866058

The typical use is to make sure plotted text is the same size as your theme’s default text size.

default_size <- 11

ex_plot <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = disp, y = mpg)) + 
    geom_text(aes(label = row.names(mtcars)),
              # geom_text uses millimeters, so convert
              size = ggunit::mm(default_size),
              check_overlap = TRUE) + 
    # base_size is in points, so don't convert
    theme_linedraw(base_size = default_size)

ex_plot

There is also a px() function, which converts from some unit to pixels, given some resolution (pixels per inch). This is very useful for use with html content like gt tables, although the name is regrettably (and temporarily) the same as gt::px().

# What's a 12 pt font in pixels, assuming web resolution of 96?
px(x = 12, units = "pts", res = 96)
#> [1] 16

Examples

In RMarkdown, my figures are set to a width of 100%, so my fig.height and fig.width options defines the scale of the graphic.

Thus, I have a physical constraint (whatever I set fig.height and fig.width to). So I can use text_dimensions() to find the appropriate text size given my desired graphic height in lines.

Notice that I don’t have to change (a) the figure dimensions, or (b) anything about the theme or the plotted text geom. The only thing I have to change is the number of “lines” I want my graphic to be.

# fig.height = 6, fig.width = (6 * 16 / 9)
default_size <- text_dimensions(height = 6, lines = 45)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = disp, y = mpg)) + 
    geom_text(aes(label = row.names(mtcars)),
              # geom_text uses millimeters, so convert
              size = mm(default_size),
              check_overlap = TRUE) + 
    # base_size is in points, so don't convert
    theme_linedraw(base_size = default_size)

# fig.height = 6, fig.width = (6 * 16 / 9)
default_size <- text_dimensions(height = 6, lines = 35)

ex_plot <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = disp, y = mpg)) + 
    geom_text(aes(label = row.names(mtcars)),
              # geom_text uses millimeters, so convert
              size = mm(default_size),
              check_overlap = TRUE) + 
    # base_size is in points, so don't convert
    theme_linedraw(base_size = default_size)

ex_plot

# fig.height = 6, fig.width = (6 * 16 / 9)
default_size <- text_dimensions(height = 6, lines = 25)

ex_plot <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = disp, y = mpg)) + 
    geom_text(aes(label = row.names(mtcars)),
              # geom_text uses millimeters, so convert
              size = mm(default_size),
              check_overlap = TRUE) + 
    # base_size is in points, so don't convert
    theme_linedraw(base_size = default_size)

ex_plot