[R] labRow/labCol options in heatmap()

[Martin Maechler]

{I'm vading through old "todo" e-mails...}

>>>>> "Anja" == Anja von Heydebreck <heydebre at molgen.mpg.de>
>>>>>     on Mon, 16 Feb 2004 11:41:13 +0100 writes:

    Anja> The function heatmap() allows to specify row/column labels
    Anja> via the options labRow/labCol. From the code of heatmap(),
    Anja> I understand that when no labels are specified, the row/column
    Anja> labels (or indices) of the input matrix are taken as labels and 
    Anja> re-ordered together with the rows and columns of the matrix before 
    Anja> plotting, whereas labels supplied via labRow/labCol are plotted
    Anja> in the original order.

    <..........>

    Anja> To see an example, try

    Anja> a <- matrix(c(1,1,1,2,0,2), nrow=3)
    Anja> rownames(a) <- 1:3
    Anja> x11()
    Anja> heatmap(a)
    Anja> x11()
    Anja> heatmap(a, labRow=rownames(a))

    Anja> Is this really meant to work like this? - From
    Anja> the help of heatmap(), one might expect also user-supplied
    Anja> labels to be re-ordered together with the rows and
    Anja> columns of the matrix.

Yes, indeed -- and as you suggest, the current behavior is not
what it should be.

This is being fixed in R-patched aka "R 1.9.1 alpha" (to be
1.9.1 later this month).

Thanking you for the clear report,
Martin Maechler