[R] abbreviate or wrap dimname labels

[John Fox]

Dear Mike,

There is an abbreviate() function that will do some of what you want; it
shouldn't be too hard to start with that and add the rest, such as wrapping.

Regards,
 John

--------------------------------
John Fox
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8S 4M4
905-525-9140x23604
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox 
-------------------------------- 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of 
> Michael Friendly
> Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 11:12 AM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: [R] abbreviate or wrap dimname labels
> 
> For a variety of displays (mosaicplots, barplots, ...) one 
> often wants to either abbreviate or wrap long labels, 
> particularly when these are made up of several words.
> In general, it would be nice to have a function,
> 
> abbreviate.or.wrap <-
>     function(x, maxlength=10, maxlines=2, split=" ") { }
> 
> that would take a character vector or a list of vectors, x, 
> and try to abbreviate or wrap them to fit approximately the 
> maxlength and maxlines constraints, using the split argument 
> to specify allowable characters to wrap to multiple lines.
> 
> For example, this two-way table has dimnames too long to be 
> displayed nicely in a mosaicplot:
> 
>  > library(catspec)
>  > library(vcd)
>  >
>  > data(FHtab)
>  > FHtab<-as.data.frame(FHtab)
>  >
>  > xtable <- xtabs(Freq ~ .,FHtab)
>  > lab <- dimnames(xtable)
>  > lab
> $OccFather
> [1] "Upper nonmanual" "Lower nonmanual" "Upper manual"    
> "Lower manual"
> [5] "Farm"
> 
> $OccSon
> [1] "Upper nonmanual" "Lower nonmanual" "Upper manual"    
> "Lower manual"
> [5] "Farm"
> 
> abbreviate works here, but gives results that aren't very readable:
> 
>  > lapply(lab, abbreviate, 8)
> $OccFather
> Upper nonmanual Lower nonmanual    Upper manual    Lower 
> manual       Farm
>       "Upprnnmn"      "Lwrnnmnl"      "Uppermnl"      "Lowermnl" 
>    "Farm"
> 
> $OccSon
> Upper nonmanual Lower nonmanual    Upper manual    Lower manual 
>     Farm
>       "Upprnnmn"      "Lwrnnmnl"      "Uppermnl"      "Lowermnl" 
>    "Farm"
> 
> In a related thread, Marc Schwartz proposed a solution for 
> wrapping labels, based on
> 
>  >short.labels <- sapply(labels, function(x) paste(strwrap(x,
>                           10), collapse = "\n"), USE.NAMES = FALSE)
> 
> But, my attempt to use strwrap in my context gives a single 
> string for each set of dimension names:
> 
>  > stack.lab <-function(x) { paste(strwrap(x,10), collapse = 
> "\n") }  > lapply(lab, stack.lab) $OccFather [1] 
> "Upper\nnonmanual\nLower\nnonmanual\nUpper\nmanual\nLower\nman
> ual\nFarm"
> 
> $OccSon
> [1] 
> "Upper\nnonmanual\nLower\nnonmanual\nUpper\nmanual\nLower\nman
> ual\nFarm"
> 
> For my particular example, I can do what I want with gsub, 
> but it is hardly general:
> 
>  > lab[[1]] <- gsub(" ","\n", lab[[1]])
>  > lab[[2]] <- lab[[1]]   # cheating: I know it's a square table
>  > lab
> $OccFather
> [1] "Upper\nnonmanual" "Lower\nnonmanual" "Upper\nmanual" 
> "Lower\nmanual"
> [5] "Farm"
> 
> $OccSon
> [1] "Upper\nnonmanual" "Lower\nnonmanual" "Upper\nmanual" 
> "Lower\nmanual"
> [5] "Farm"
> 
>  > dimnames(xtable) <- lab
> 
> Then,
> mosaicplot(xtable, shade=TRUE)
> gives a nice display!
> 
> Can anyone help with a more general solution for wrapping 
> labels or abbreviate.or.wrap()?
> 
> thanks,
> -Michael
> 
> -- 
> Michael Friendly     Email: friendly at yorku.ca
> Professor, Psychology Dept.
> York University      Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814
> 4700 Keele Street    http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/friendly.html
> Toronto, ONT  M3J 1P3 CANADA
> 
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