ggplot2 annotate layer position in R

Question

In my plot I have both legends and text annotations. For legends, I can specify

legend.justification=c(1,0), legend.position=c(1,0)

to locate the position relative to the plotting region (e.g. topright, bottomleft). However, when I put an annotate layer (http://docs.ggplot2.org/0.9.3.1/annotate.html), it seems that I can only specify the coordinates of the text

annotate("text", x = 8e-7, y = 1e-5, label=data.note, size = 5)

instead of the position of the plotting region (I want to put the text in the bottomleft corner). The length of the text (label) may vary for different plots. Is there a way to achieve this? Thanks!

score 15 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 18 '14 at 22:15

You can use the fact that -Inf and Inf will get mapped to the extremes of the position scales without extending them to place it in the bottom left corner. hjust and vjust are needed to make the reference point the lower left corner of your text. [using jlhoward's mock data.]

set.seed(1)
df <- data.frame(x=rnorm(100),y=rnorm(100))

ggplot(df, aes(x,y)) +geom_point()+
  annotate("text",x=-Inf,y=-Inf,hjust=0,vjust=0,label="Text annotation")

enter image description here

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 18 '14 at 19:22

Is this what you're looking for??

set.seed(1)
df <- data.frame(x=rnorm(100),y=rnorm(100))
ggplot(df, aes(x,y)) +geom_point()+
  annotate("text",x=min(df$x),y=min(df$y),hjust=.2,label="Text annotation")

There will probably be a bit of experimentation with hjust=... needed to get this exactly at the bottom left.

score 6 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 08 '16 at 11:20

The "Inf" solution has problems when you want multi-line text. In addition, it there is no margin between the text and the panel edge, which is ugly. The other solution requires explicit mention of the data which is not good either.

The desired effect can be achieved nicely with annotation_custom (or in my example, the proto Geom directly). You have configurable margin, text and box justification. The added bonus in the following code is that you can specify which facet to annotate with something like facets=data.frame(cat1='blue', cat2='tall').

library("ggplot2")
annotate_textp <- function(label, x, y, facets=NULL, hjust=0, vjust=0, color='black', alpha=NA,
                          family=thm$text$family, size=thm$text$size, fontface=1, lineheight=1.0,
                          box_just=ifelse(c(x,y)<0.5,0,1), margin=unit(size/2, 'pt'), thm=theme_get()) {
  x <- scales::squish_infinite(x)
  y <- scales::squish_infinite(y)
  data <- if (is.null(facets)) data.frame(x=NA) else data.frame(x=NA, facets)

  tg <- grid::textGrob(
    label, x=0, y=0, hjust=hjust, vjust=vjust,
    gp=grid::gpar(col=alpha(color, alpha), fontsize=size, fontfamily=family, fontface=fontface, lineheight=lineheight)
  )
  ts <- grid::unit.c(grid::grobWidth(tg), grid::grobHeight(tg))
  vp <- grid::viewport(x=x, y=y, width=ts[1], height=ts[2], just=box_just)
  tg <- grid::editGrob(tg, x=ts[1]*hjust, y=ts[2]*vjust, vp=vp)
  inner <- grid::grobTree(tg, vp=grid::viewport(width=unit(1, 'npc')-margin*2, height=unit(1, 'npc')-margin*2))

  layer(
    data = NULL,
    stat = StatIdentity,
    position = PositionIdentity,
    geom = GeomCustomAnn,
    inherit.aes = TRUE,
    params = list(
      grob=grid::grobTree(inner), 
      xmin=-Inf, 
      xmax=Inf, 
      ymin=-Inf, 
      ymax=Inf
    )
  )
}

qplot(1:10,1:10) + annotate_text2('some long text\nx = 1', x=0.5, y=0.5, hjust=1)

ggplot2 annotate layer position in R

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