[Rd] barplot() behavior changes under 1.9.1 Alpha

[Kurt Hornik]

>>>>> Marc Schwartz writes:

> Greetings all,
> It would appear that some default behavior changes for barplot() have
> been introduced into Version 1.9.1 alpha (2004-05-30).

> One change is in the specification of the default 'col' argument, which
> is now:

> col: a vector of colors for the bars or bar components. By default, grey
> is used if height is a vector, and heat.colors(nrow(height)) if height
> is a matrix.


> 'col' now defaults to NULL, whereas up through 1.9.0-patched it
> defaulted to 'col = heat.colors(NR)'.

> I just completed the installation/upgrade of FC2 this weekend and
> thought initially there was a problem with FC2, until I
> compiled/re-installed a copy of '1.9.0-patched' and noted the old
> behavior.

> Can this change be noted in the NEWS file?  I did not see it noted
> there, which contributed to my confusion until I reviewed the code and
> help file.

> Also, it would appear that the initial change in 1.9.0's barplot(),
> which caused some problems for folks relative to using the output of
> table() as the input for the 'height' argument, has been restored to the
> 1.8.1 behavior. The 1.9.0 change from 1.8.1 was reported in r-bugs
> #6776.

> It would appear from a code review that the initial checks of the
> 'height' argument in barplot() have been restructured in 1.9.1-alpha,
> restoring the 1.8.1 style behavior.

> Can this change also be documented in the NEWS file?

Mark,

Thanks for bringing this up.  I have now changed NEWS to say

    o   The default barplot method now handles vectors and 1-d arrays
        (e.g., obtained by table()) the same, and uses grey instead of
        heat color palettes in these cases.  (Also fixes PR#6776.)

It is not true that the 1.8.1 behavior has been restored.  1.8.1 treated
vectors and 1-d arrays differently, which after long discussions has
been decided to be a bug :-)

Best
-k