[R] Help using gPath

[hadley wickham]

> Here's a partial extract from a sample session after running your code
> (NOTE this is using the development version of R;  grid.ls() does not
> exist in R 2.5.1 or earlier):
>
> Inspect the grob tree with grid.ls() (similar to Hadley's
> current.grobTree(), but with different formatting) ...

(I'll probably remove current.grobTree as soon as grid.ls makes it to
a released version of R)

>
>  > grid.ls()
> plot-surrounds
>    GRID.cellGrob.118
>      background
>    GRID.cellGrob.119
>      plot.gTree.113
>        background
>        guide.gTree.90
>          background.rect.80
>          minor-horizontal.segments.82
>          minor-vertical.segments.84
> # OUTPUT TRUNCATED

The format is much nicer than mine!

> ... It is not necessarily obvious which grob is which,
> but a little trial and error (e.g., grid.edit() to change
> the colour of a grob) shows that the border on the first
> panel is 'guide.rect.92', which is a child of 'plot.gTree.113'
> (NOTE the numbers come from a fresh R session).

I will try and rename these grobs so that they are more easily
accessible (and reproducible across multiple calls).  That should make
things easier in the future.

> Use grid.get() to grab that gTree and inspect that
> further using grid.ls(), this time also showing the
> viewports involved ...

What do all the upViewports represent?  Could the downViewports be
incorporating into the same place as the original definition?

> (The remaining code should work for you in your version of R;  it
> is just grid.ls() that is new.)
>
> Remove the original border rect, ...
>
>  > grid.remove("guide.rect.92", global=TRUE)
>
> ... (need global=TRUE because the border appears twice as a child
> of 'plot.gTree.113' [not sure why that is]) then add some lines that
> only draw the top, right, and bottom borders ...
>
>  > grid.add("plot.gTree.113",
>             linesGrob(c(0, 1, 1, 0), c(1, 1, 0, 0),
>                       gp=gpar(col="green"),
>                       vp=vpPath("layout", "panel_1_1")))
>
> ... (I drew the new lines green so that they are easy to see).
> NOTE that in order to put the new lines in the same "place" as
> the original border, the new lines are added as children of the
> gTree 'plot.gTree.113' and they have a vpPath to make sure
> they get drawn in the right viewport within that gTree.

Do you think it would be worth drawing all these rectangles as lines
to make them easier to edit?

> What would probably be ideal would be a graphical interface to the
> grid.ls()-type information (something like an object explorer) that
> would make it easier to see which object is which and also make it
> easier to add and remove objects.  A nice student project perhaps :)

That would be great!

Hadley
-- 
http://had.co.nz/