Waffle Chart - FontAwesome issue

Question

there are a few posts about this issue posted elsewhere and I've tried the solutions but can't seem to get it to work. If there is an alternative to waffle that will give me a similar output I'd be keen to know too.

I am trying to plot a waffle chart as seen with this link

with the code:

waffle(c(50, 30, 15, 5), rows = 5, use_glyph = "child", glyph_size = 6, 
title = "Look I made an infographic using R!")

However, I get the error: Error: FontAwesome not found. Install via: https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/tree/master/fonts

So I've installed it onto my mac, I can see the font is coming up on Word.

I've tried to install it on R using the advice here with the code:

library(extrafont)
font_import(pattern="FontAwesome")

I get the error: Scanning ttf files in /Library/Fonts/, /System/Library/Fonts, ~/Library/Fonts/ ... Extracting .afm files from .ttf files... Error in data.frame(fontfile = ttfiles, FontName = "", stringsAsFactors = FALSE) : arguments imply differing number of rows: 0, 1

I also tried:

font_import()

but I get the error Found FontName for 0 fonts.

Thanks for the help!

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 09 '22 at 12:34

I also struggled to get font awesome to work with waffle. However, waffle plots are pretty straighforward to make in ggplot, so you could create your own waffle function that does the same thing using emojifont and extrafont

library(emojifont)
library(extrafont)
library(ggplot2)

my_waffle <- function(x, rows = 5, use_glyph = 'square', glyph_size = 6,
                      title = 'Waffle chart') {
  
  len <- sum(x)
  waffles <- seq(len) - 1
  nms <- if(is.null(names(x))) seq_along(x) else names(x)
  df <- data.frame(xvals = waffles %/% rows,
                   yvals = 1 - (waffles %% rows),
                   fill = factor(rep(nms, times = x)))
  
  ggplot(df, aes(xvals, yvals, color = fill)) +
    geom_text(label = fontawesome(paste('fa', use_glyph, sep = '-')), 
              family = 'fontawesome-webfont', size = glyph_size) +
    coord_equal(expand = TRUE) +
    lims(x  = c(min(df$xvals) - 1, max(df$xvals) + 1),
         y  = c(min(df$yvals) - 1, max(df$yvals) + 1)) + 
    theme_void(base_size = 16) +
    labs(title = title, color = NULL) +
    theme(plot.title = element_text(),
          plot.margin = margin(10, 10, 10, 10)) 
}

Now you can call my_waffle instead of waffle with the same arguments and get the desired result:

my_waffle(c(50, 30, 15, 5), rows = 5, use_glyph = "child", glyph_size = 6, 
       title = "Look I made an infographic using R!")

and

my_waffle(c(gasoline = 50, diesel = 30, hybrid = 15, electric = 5), 
          rows = 5, use_glyph = "car",
          glyph_size = 6, 
          title = "Look I made an infographic using R!")

Thank you so much!! this works if I manually input the numbers — user19250276, Jun 10 '22 at 15:12
Just wanted to follow up - do you know if there is a way to change the colours? — user19250276, Jul 12 '22 at 16:38
@user19250276 yes - just add a `scale_color_manual` call to the plotting code. — Allan Cameron, Jul 12 '22 at 16:55

Waffle Chart - FontAwesome issue

1 Answers1