How can I find all R packages that include graphics functions?

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179

answers:

+3 Q:

How can I find all R packages that include graphics functions?

I always have difficulty in finding all available alternative ways to produce a specific graph, either one that I have already decided to use (looking for different variations) or one that I have not yet thought of.

The R Graphical Manual site provides a complete list of samples of R's graphics functions, however it's easier for me to search providing a package name (how else -for example- can I get a resultset including superbarplot function, when I want to look for barplots?. Let alone that the superbarplot graph does not appear in the results even if I try searching for it's package: UsingR)

The R-SAS-SPSS Add-on Module Comparison - and especially on topic Graphics, Static in the table provided - gave me the idea that it would be nice to have a place where all relevant packages are listed by topic.

Do you have any idea about something like that?

+2 A:

Have you seen the R Graph Gallery ?

Other than that, you may have to index all the source code of CRAN packages to search efficiently...

Dirk Eddelbuettel 2010-01-28 19:13:24

Yes, R Graph Gallery is a site that I use very often (I also use this one http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Created_with_R ). I didn't understand how code indexing is done. Could you explain it?

gd047 2010-01-28 19:46:20

You would have to download all sources, unpack them, grep for instances of plot(), xyplot(), ... and index that for your convenience. I was trying to say that I doubt such a meta-index exists. That is, outside of the existing R-search engines like Rseek.org etc.

Dirk Eddelbuettel 2010-01-28 20:36:53

+4 A:

If you're interested in learning about all the possible graphics you can make, you should learn about the grammar of graphics, and (my) implementation of it in R: ggplot2.

hadley 2010-01-28 22:31:44

:) I agree to a point and I assure you that I have put much effort trying to learn it. However some times I prefer being able to have a choise between several different solutions instead o making one up.

gd047 2010-01-29 06:36:18

+2 A:

these are good memory-joggers. I second the ggplot2 recommend, also recommend looking thru CRAN views:

http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/

http://cran.fhcrc.org/web/views/Graphics.html

(this mirror seems faster in west coast US)

http://dataspora.com/archive/2009/seminar/Survey_of_R_Graphics_by_Driscoll_Dataspora_Jun2009.pdf

http://zoonek2.free.fr/UNIX/48_R/04.html

(possibly world's longest webpage)

http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/120/lectures.html

Ihaka's lectures notes

Gene T 2010-02-08 03:25:17