<> Hello
One sometimes (quite often really ) marvel at the choice of defaults in R's graphic engine. For some obscure reason, mtext uses the typographical descender (bottom of letters) to align text. That is: "gG" will end up slightly higher that "GG". Depending on the font, "Q" might end up higher than "O". (for explanation of baseline & descender see: http://www.paratype.com/help/term/terms.asp?code=88) Example: y1 <- rnorm(30) y2 <- rnorm(30) group <- as.factor(rep(1:6, each=10)) y <- c(y1,y2) testdata <- data.frame(group, y) plot (y ~group, axes=F, xlab="why does R align the BOTTOM of the letters???" ) box() mtext(expression(italic("Normal 1")) ,1 , line=1, at=1) mtext(expression(italic("Higher 1 ")) ,1 , line=1, at=2) mtext(expression(italic("Normal 3 ")) ,1 , line=1, at=3) mtext(expression(italic("Higher 2 ")) ,1 , line=1, at=4) mtext(expression(italic("Normal 3 ")) ,1 , line=1, at=5) mtext(expression(italic("Higher 3 ")) ,1 , line=1, at=6) As the word "Higher" includes a descending letter (g), this factor name ends up higher. I must say I have never encountered a software that uses the typographical descender instead of the baseline to align text . Does anyone know how to make R use the baseline instead? Perhaps using adj or padj? Or do I have to do something silly as adding "g", col=white to each mtext-line to trick R into aligning the names. Cheers Andreas ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
