Arrange common plot width with facetted ggplot 2.0.0 & gridExtra

Question

Since I have updated to ggplot2 2.0.0, I cannot arrange charts propperly using gridExtra. The issue is that the faceted charts will get compressed while other will expand. T

Answer 1

This is ugly but if you're under a time pressure this hack will work (not generalizable and dependent upon plot window size). Basically make the top plot 2 columns with a blank plot on the right and guess at the widths.

grid.arrange(
    grid.arrange(plot.iris, ggplot() + theme_minimal(),ncol=2, widths = c(.9, .1)),
    plot.mpg, 
    ncol=1
)