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I feel like a lot of attempts to recreate ggplot2 end up being superficial because they don't recognize / duplicate the power of the underlying Grid graphics th
by peatmoss 9y ago
I feel like a lot of attempts to recreate ggplot2 end up being superficial because they don't recognize / duplicate the power of the underlying Grid graphics that ggplot2 uses.
I know that web technologies are all the rage these days, but at least for static, publication-ready graphics, Grid is really nice substrate, with well thought out lower-level abstractions.
EDIT: I should also add that it's documented within an inch of its life should anyone feel that it's worth recreating: https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/grid/html/grid-package.html https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/grid/html/grid...
- platz 9y agoIn what way does eschewing the underlying Grid graphics make a less desirable experience for a ggplot2 port?
- peatmoss 9y agoThe ports I see feel like a < 100% enumeration of the plots in the mainline ggplot2 package. However, there are heaps of great extensions to ggplot2 that I suspect are in part due to there being a carefully thought out set of abstractions at the low level of Grid that mesh nicely with the high level abstractions of ggplot. ggplot2 being built on top of Grid means that modestly complex stuff is easy (in ggplot2 by itself), but that it's relatively easy to drop down into the lower layer (grid) to do more.