How can I use a graphic imported with grImport as axis tick labels in ggplot2 (using grid functions)?

Question

I\'m hoping I can combine the spiffy importing and drawing powers of grImport with the awesome graphing power of ggplot2, but I simply don\'t under

Answer 1

Below is a hack to use a custom grob for axis labels.

library(grid)
library(ggplot2)

## convert the labels to some parameter to be used in the custom grob
## here simply an index that will be interpreted as color
mapping <- function(x, ...){
  seq_along(x)
}

library(grImport)

hourglass <- new("Picture",
paths= list(new("PictureFill",
x=c(0, 1, 0, 1),
y=c(0, 0, 1, 1))),
summary= new("PictureSummary",
numPaths=1,
xscale=c(0, 1),
yscale=c(0, 1)))

## bare bones edit of theme_text()
my_axis <- function () 
{
    structure(function(label, x = 0.5, y = 0.5, default.units = "npc", ...) {
      cols <- mapping(label)

      symbolsGrob(hourglass, x, 0*x + unit(0.5, "npc"),
                  use.gc=FALSE,size=unit(5,"mm"), gp=gpar(fill=cols))

    }, class = "theme", type = "custom", call = match.call())
}

qplot(1:12, rnorm(12)) +
  opts( axis.text.x = my_axis(), axis.ticks.margin = unit(0.5, "cm"))

Answer 2

For a single panel, it is fairly straight-forward to extract information from the x axis grob, and replace it with your own. I'm not sure how this could be extended cleanly to automatic, multi-panel axes.

library(grid)
library(ggplot2)

p <- qplot(1:12, rnorm(12))
grid.newpage()
g <- ggplotGrob(p)
grid.draw(g)
g0 <- getGrob(g, gPath("axis.text.x"), grep=TRUE)
grid.set(gPath("axis.text.x"),
         pointsGrob(x = g0$x, y=0*g0$x + unit(0.5,"npc"),
                    pch=19, gp=gpar(col=seq_along(g0$x)),
                    name = g0$name), grep = TRUE)

Answer 3

here is an example:

# convert ps to RGML
PostScriptTrace(file.path(system.file(package = "grImport"), "doc", "GNU.ps"), "GNU.xml")
PostScriptTrace(file.path(system.file(package = "grImport"), "doc", "tiger.ps"), "tiger.xml")
# read xml
pics <- list(a = readPicture("GNU.xml"), b = readPicture("tiger.xml"))

# custom function for x axis label.
my_axis <- function () {
  structure(
      function(label, x = 0.5, y = 0.5, ...) {
         absoluteGrob(
           do.call("gList", mapply(symbolsGrob, pics[label], x, y, SIMPLIFY = FALSE)),
           height = unit(1.5, "cm"))
    }
)}

qplot(factor(c("a", "b")), 1:2) + opts( axis.text.x = my_axis())