How to control ggplot's plotting area proportions instead of fitting them to devices in R?
ggplot2, plot, r
Solution
You can specify the aspect ratio of your plots using coord_fixed().
> library(ggplot2)
> df <- data.frame(
+ x = runif(100, 0, 5),
+ y = runif(100, 0, 5))
If we just go ahead and plot these data then we get a plot which conforms to the dimensions of the output device.
> ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point()
If, however, we use coord_fixed() then we get a plot with fixed aspect ratio (which, by default has x- and y-axes of same length). The size of the plot will be determined by the shortest dimension of the output device.
> ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point() + coord_fixed()
Finally, we can adjust the fixed aspect ratio by specifying an argument to coord_fixed(), where the argument is the ratio of the length of the y-axis to the length of the x-axis. So, to get a plot that is twice as tall as it is wide, we would use:
> ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point() + coord_fixed(2)
Problem
By default, each plot in `ggplot` fits its device. That's not always desirable. For instance, one may need to make tiles in `geom_tile` to be squares. Once you change the device or change the number of elements on x/y-axis, the tiles are no longer squares. Is it possible to set hard proportions or size for a plot and fit the plot in its device's window (or make the device width and height proportional to those of the plot)?