ggalt 0.4.0 now on CRAN

I’m uncontainably excited to report that the ggplot2 extension package ggalt is now on CRAN.

The absolute best part of this package is the R community members who contributed suggestions and new geoms, stats, annotations and integration features. This release would not be possible without the PRs from:

• Ben Bolker
• Ben Marwick
• Jan Schulz
• Carson Sievert

and a host of folks who have made suggestions and have put up with broken GitHub builds along the way. Y’all are awesome.

Please see the vignette and graphics-annotated help pages for info on everything that’s available. Some highlights include:

• multiple ways to render splines (so you can make those cool, smoothed D3-esque line charts :-)
• geom_cartogram() which replicates the old functionality of geom_map() so your old mapping code doesn't break anymore
• a re-re-mended coord_proj() (but, read on about why you should be re-thinking of how you do maps in ggplot2)
• lollipop charts (geom_lollipop())
• dumbbell charts (geom_dumbbell())
• step-ribbon charts
• the ability to easily encircle points (beyond those boring ellipses)
• byte formatters (i.e. turn 1024 to 1 Kb, etc)
• better integration with plotly

If you do any mapping in ggplot2, please follow the machinations of geom_sf() and the sf package. Ed and the rest of the R spatial community have done 100% outstanding work here and it is going to change how you think and work spatially in R forever (in an awesome way). I hope to retire coord_proj() and geom_cartogram() some day soon thanks to all their hard work.

Your contributions, feedback and suggestions are welcome and encouraged. The next steps for me w/r/t ggalt are ensuring 100% plotly coverage since it’s the best way to make your ggplot2 plots interactive. There are a few more additions that didn’t make it into this release that I’ll also be integrating.

Please make sure to say “thank you” to the above contributors if you see them in person on on the internets. They’ve done great work and are exemplary examples of how awesome and talented the R community is.