R color palettes for many data classes

Question

Are there any good packages for colour palettes in R that can handle many data classes? I have 16 sequential data classes. I tried RColorBrewer but it has a max of 9 data cl

Answer 1

As Kevin Wright I found that the best for me was to do manually a palette. Here I contribute my palette and a way to plot it in polygons.

# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15534032/suppress-redraw-when-calling-polygon-in-r
cuts <- function(x) {
    n <- length(x) %/% 4
    map <- rep(c(rep(TRUE,4),FALSE), n)
    result <- rep(NA, n*5)
    result[map] <- x
    result
    }
{
rownumber <- 5
xfloor    <- 0
yheight   <- 6
widthCol  <- 1
colSpacer <- 0.2
# names in: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~tzheng/files/Rcolor.pdf
manualcolors<-c('black','forestgreen', 'red2', 'orange', 'cornflowerblue', 
                'magenta', 'darkolivegreen4', 'indianred1', 'tan4', 'darkblue', 
                'mediumorchid1','firebrick4',  'yellowgreen', 'lightsalmon', 'tan3',
                "tan1",'darkgray', 'wheat4', '#DDAD4B', 'chartreuse', 
                'seagreen1', 'moccasin', 'mediumvioletred', 'seagreen','cadetblue1',
                "darkolivegreen1" ,"tan2" ,   "tomato3" , "#7CE3D8","gainsboro")

squareVec<-c(rep(rownumber,ceiling(length(manualcolors)/rownumber) ) )

map<-mapybot<-mapytop<-mapxbot<-mapxtop<-numeric()

for (i in 1:length(squareVec)){
    map <- seq(0, 5, length.out = squareVec[i]+1 )
    mapybot <- c(mapybot,(map[1:(length(map)-1)] ) )
    mapytop <- mapybot + (map[2]-map[1] )
    mapxbot <- c(mapxbot,(rep(xfloor + (widthCol*(i-1)), squareVec[i]) ) )
    mapxtop <- c(mapxtop,(rep(xfloor + (widthCol* i ) - colSpacer,squareVec[i]) ) )
}

x <- cbind(mapxbot,mapxbot,mapxtop,mapxtop ) 
y <- cbind(mapybot,mapytop,mapytop,mapybot )

opar<-par(no.readonly=TRUE) # save par

par(mar=c(0,0,0,0), font=2)
plot("", xlim=c(-0.2,max(x)), ylim=c(min(y), max(y)), 
     ylab = "", xaxt='n', 
     xlab = "", yaxt='n',
     main = NULL)

polygon(x=cuts(t(x)), y=cuts(t(y)), col=manualcolors, lwd=2)

text(x=t(x[1:length(manualcolors)]), 
     y=t(y[1:length(manualcolors)])+(yheight/rownumber)/2, 
     labels= manualcolors, 
     cex=0.8, col="white", pos=4
     )

par(opar) # restore par
}