Special Syntax for Layout Axis

ggalign focuses on aligning observations across multiple plots. While it builds on the ggplot2 framework, there are key differences in how scales, facets, and coordinates are handled in the layout axis. This vignette highlights the differences in syntax between ggalign and ggplot2.

Layout Axis

The layout axis refers to specific axes in multi-plots layout: - x-axis in vertical stack layouts

ggalign introduces special syntax and handling for these axes, differing from the default behavior in ggplot2. These adjustments ensure that observations are properly aligned and operations are user-friendly.

library(ggalign)
set.seed(123)
small_mat <- matrix(rnorm(81), nrow = 9)
rownames(small_mat) <- paste0("row", seq_len(nrow(small_mat)))
colnames(small_mat) <- paste0("column", seq_len(ncol(small_mat)))

Position Scales

We introduce some adjustments to better align with the layout concept in breaks, labels and expand.

breaks

breaks and labels are typically handled similarly to discrete scales, as we focus on aligning observations (which should be regarded as discrete variables) in the layout axis; however, a continuous scale can also be provided.

breaks should be one of:

- `NULL` for no breaks

- `waiver()` for the default breaks (the full data index or `NULL` if no
data names and `labels` is `waiver()`)

- A character vector of breaks (rownames / colunames of the matrix).

- A numeric vector of data index (must be an integer).

- A function that takes the data limits or the data index as input and
returns breaks as output. Also accepts rlang lambda function notation. 
ggheatmap(small_mat) + scale_x_continuous(breaks = NULL)

ggheatmap(small_mat) + scale_x_continuous()

no_names <- small_mat
colnames(no_names) <- NULL
ggheatmap(no_names) + scale_x_continuous()

ggheatmap(small_mat) + scale_x_continuous(breaks = c("column3", "column5"))

ggheatmap(small_mat) + scale_x_continuous(breaks = c(3, 5))

Floating number were not allowed in breaks.

ggheatmap(small_mat) + scale_x_continuous(breaks = c(3.5, 5))
#> Error in `scale_x_continuous()`:
#> ! Can't convert from `breaks` <double> to <integer> due to loss of precision.
#> • Locations: 1

labels

labels should be one of:

- `NULL` for no labels

- `waiver()` for the default labels (data names)

- A character vector giving labels (must be same length as breaks)

- An expression vector (must be the same length as breaks). See `?plotmath`
for details. 

- A function that takes the data names (or breaks if data has no names) as
input and returns labels as output. This can be also a rlang lambda
function.
ggheatmap(small_mat) + scale_x_continuous(labels = NULL)

ggheatmap(small_mat) + scale_x_continuous()

ggheatmap(small_mat) +
    scale_x_continuous(labels = letters[seq_len(ncol(small_mat))])

ggheatmap(small_mat) +
    scale_x_continuous(breaks = c(3, 5), labels = c("a", "b"))

data ordering

Both breaks and labels should be provided in the original order of the raw data, the internal will reorder them accordingly if you reorder the layout axis.

index <- order(colMeans(small_mat))
xlabels <- letters[seq_len(ncol(small_mat))]
print(xlabels[index])
#> [1] "c" "h" "i" "g" "f" "e" "a" "b" "d"

ggheatmap(small_mat) +
    scale_x_continuous(labels = xlabels) +
    hmanno("t") +
    align_order(index)

expand

By default, we utilize zero expansion for the layout axis. This is typically the desired setting. If you wish to introduce expansion, you must manually adjust it and apply it to each plot to ensure proper axis alignment.

ggheatmap(small_mat) +
    scale_x_continuous(expand = expansion(mult = 0.1)) +
    hmanno("t") +
    align_dendro(aes(color = branch), k = 3L) +
    scale_x_continuous(expand = expansion(mult = 0.1))

theme

Although ggplot2 does not officially support vectorized input for theme elements, we can still utilize it. For layout axis theme elements such as axis.text, axis.ticks, and axis.ticks.length, these will be reordered according to the layout axis ordering.

ggheatmap(small_mat) +
    theme(
        axis.text.x = element_text(
            colour = c(rep("red", 4), rep("blue", 5))
        ),
        axis.ticks.x = element_line(
            colour = c(rep("red", 4), rep("blue", 5))
        ),
        axis.ticks.length.x = unit(rep(c(1, 4), times = c(4, 5)), "mm")
    ) +
    hmanno("t") +
    align_dendro(aes(color = branch), k = 3L) +
    scale_y_continuous(expand = expansion()) &
    theme(plot.margin = margin())
#> Warning: Vectorized input to `element_text()` is not officially supported.
#> ℹ Results may be unexpected or may change in future versions of ggplot2.

To prevent the reordering, wrap the values with I():

ggheatmap(small_mat) +
    theme(
        axis.text.x = element_text(
            colour = I(c(rep("red", 4), rep("blue", 5)))
        ),
        axis.ticks.x = element_line(
            colour = I(c(rep("red", 4), rep("blue", 5)))
        ),
        axis.ticks.length.x = I(unit(rep(c(1, 4), times = c(4, 5)), "mm"))
    ) +
    hmanno("t") +
    align_dendro(aes(color = branch), k = 3L) +
    scale_y_continuous(expand = expansion()) &
    theme(plot.margin = margin())
#> Warning: Vectorized input to `element_text()` is not officially supported.
#> ℹ Results may be unexpected or may change in future versions of ggplot2.

Facets

When working with facets, manual configuration of the panel using the facet_*() functions is not possible since the internal structure will use facet_grid() to set the row/column groups defined by align_*() functions. However, you can still use facet_grid() or facet_null() (if no panel) to control other arguments except layout axis panels (rows in horizontal stack layout or cols in vertical stack layout, or both rows and cols in heatmap body).

A common use case is to modify the panel strip text. The default theme (theme_ggalign()) will always remove the panel strip text, you can override this behaviour with theme(strip.text = element_text()) to add the panel title in the plot area.

ggheatmap(small_mat) +
    facet_grid(labeller = labeller(.column_panel = function(x) letters[as.integer(x)])) +
    theme(strip.text = element_text()) +
    hmanno("top") +
    align_kmeans(centers = 3L)

Coords

Currently, only cartesian coordinate can be used to align axis well. Internally, the limits will always be set to the number of observations, with an additional range expansion of 0.5 added on both ends.

Session information

sessionInfo()
#> R version 4.4.0 (2024-04-24)
#> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
#> Running under: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
#> 
#> Matrix products: default
#> BLAS/LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmkl_rt.so;  LAPACK version 3.8.0
#> 
#> locale:
#>  [1] LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C           LC_TIME=C.UTF-8       
#>  [4] LC_COLLATE=C           LC_MONETARY=C.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=C.UTF-8   
#>  [7] LC_PAPER=C.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C              LC_ADDRESS=C          
#> [10] LC_TELEPHONE=C         LC_MEASUREMENT=C.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C   
#> 
#> time zone: Asia/Shanghai
#> tzcode source: system (glibc)
#> 
#> attached base packages:
#> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
#> 
#> other attached packages:
#> [1] ggalign_0.0.4 ggplot2_3.5.1
#> 
#> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
#>  [1] sass_0.4.9         utf8_1.2.4         generics_0.1.3     digest_0.6.36     
#>  [5] magrittr_2.0.3     evaluate_0.24.0    grid_4.4.0         RColorBrewer_1.1-3
#>  [9] bookdown_0.39      iterators_1.0.14   fastmap_1.2.0      foreach_1.5.2     
#> [13] jsonlite_1.8.8     ggrastr_1.0.2      seriation_1.5.6    fansi_1.0.6       
#> [17] viridisLite_0.4.2  scales_1.3.0       codetools_0.2-20   textshaping_0.4.0 
#> [21] jquerylib_0.1.4    cli_3.6.3          registry_0.5-1     rlang_1.1.4       
#> [25] munsell_0.5.1      withr_3.0.0        cachem_1.1.0       yaml_2.3.8        
#> [29] ggbeeswarm_0.7.2   tools_4.4.0        dplyr_1.1.4        colorspace_2.1-0  
#> [33] vctrs_0.6.5        TSP_1.2-4          ca_0.71.1          R6_2.5.1          
#> [37] lifecycle_1.0.4    vipor_0.4.7        ragg_1.3.2         pkgconfig_2.0.3   
#> [41] beeswarm_0.4.0     pillar_1.9.0       bslib_0.7.0        gtable_0.3.5      
#> [45] data.table_1.15.4  glue_1.7.0         systemfonts_1.1.0  xfun_0.45         
#> [49] tibble_3.2.1       tidyselect_1.2.1   highr_0.11         knitr_1.47        
#> [53] farver_2.1.2       htmltools_0.5.8.1  rmarkdown_2.27     labeling_0.4.3    
#> [57] compiler_4.4.0