Dear R-listers,

I have a little problem with a boxplot and I hope you can help me figuring
it out.
I'll try to make up some data to illustrate the issue. Sorry, if my
procedures look naive, but these are my first steps in R. Any comments
and/or suggestions are very welcome.

let's create a vector var1:
var1 <- rnorm(100)

and 5 five logical vectors. In this case the vectors don't mean anything, I
just need 5 vectors to illustrate my problem. Each of the 5 vectors
identifies a geographic area of my interest.
med <- var1 < -0.7275
anglo <- var1 > -0.7275 & var1 < -0.09402
scand <- var1 > -0.09402
ceast <- var1 < -0.7275 & var1 > -4.10500
seast <- var1 < 2.5 & var1 > 0.49

and let's put all the vectors together in a data frame:
data <- data.frame(anglo, med, scand, seast, ceast, var1)

I wish to compare the samples of each region with respect to variable var1.
Therefore I run:

boxplot(var1[med==1], var1[anglo==1], var1[scand==1], var1[ceast==1],
var1[seast==1])

Let's make the chart clearer and let's add meaningful labels to the x-axis.
Hence, I create a new vector containing a label for each of my 5 dummies:

 vec <-
c("Mediterranean","Anglo-Saxon","Scandinavian","Centre-East","South-East")

Now the boxplot is:
boxplot(var1[med==1], var1[anglo==1], var1[scand==1], var1[ceast==1],
var1[seast==1], names = vec)

As you can see, some of the labels disappear because of the size of the
chart (I suppose). I tried to solve the problem by changing the orientation
of the labels with the las = 3 option (see below):
boxplot(var1[med==1], var1[anglo==1], var1[scand==1], var1[ceast==1],
var1[seast==1], names = vec, las = 3)

but the problem is not solved: the names are too long and stand partially
out of the figure.
How could I solve this problem? I have been longly google-ing and looking
into reference manuals, but with no success. In Stata a simple way could be
just bending each label by 45 degrees, but it seems boxplot does not allow
such a solution. Furthermore I did not manage to enlarge my figure to place
everything in.
Thanks a lot in advance for all your support.
Best wishes,
f.

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