[BioC] OT: question about plots, general R, really...

[Ana Conesa]

Hi Jose,

I came across this same problem some time ago and I figured out a quite 
rudimentary solution, I guess. Probably there are more elgant ones (I would 
love to know them!!!)
Basically what I do is:
- Split my device up into one more row, very narrow, at the upper part, to 
host the general title, and then set my first figure to spand across this 
first row. 
- Then plot a "ghost" plot in which I have made everything not visible but 
the Title. Normally you have to adjust the margins for this first "plot" in 
advance.
- Resest the margins
- Plot the other plots  

For example, for a title, plus 4 figures you could use:
> layout(matrix(c(1,1,2,3,4,5),3,2, byrow=T),heights=c(1,6,6))
> par(mar=c(0.1,0.1,2,0.1))
> plot(0, main="Your Title", xaxt="n", yaxt="n", xlab="", 
ylab="",bty="n",col="white") 
>par(mar=c(c(4, 4, 4, 2)))
> plot...what ever...

You have to play a bit with the heights parameter of layout to get the 
division you are happy with (the function layout.show() shows you the 
position of each plot in your screen). And play also with the margins, maybe.

Hope this is of some use to you...

Ana


On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 18:12:56 +0100, J.delasHeras wrote
> This is a bit off-topic, as it's purely R, I suppose...
> 
> I am making figures containing 6 plots (MA plots, in this case), using:
> 
> par(mfrow=c(2,3))
> 
> now, I would like to add a title, for instance, to the whole figure, 
> not to the individual plots... how does one do that? I can only seem 
> to add text, title etc to each plot...
> 
> thanks for any pointers!
> 
> Jose
> 
> -- 
> Dr. Jose I. de las Heras                      Email: J.delasHeras at ed.ac.uk
> The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology    Phone: +44 (0)131 6513374
> Institute for Cell & Molecular Biology        Fax:   +44 (0)131 6507360
> Swann Building, Mayfield Road
> University of Edinburgh
> Edinburgh EH9 3JR
> UK
> 
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