<p><div><div><div><div data-width="100" data-show-faces="false" data-send="true" data-layout="button_count" data-height="21" data-href="http://www.r-bloggers.com/images-as-x-axis-labels-updated/"></div></div><div><a data-url="http://www.r-bloggers.com/images-as-x-axis-labels-updated/" data-counturl="http://www.r-bloggers.com/images-as-x-axis-labels-updated/" data-count="horizontal" data-text="Images as x-axis labels (updated)" class="twitter-share-button" data-via="rbloggers" href="https://twitter.com/share"></a></div><div></div></div><div></div></div>
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(This article was first published on <strong><a href="http://jcarroll.com.au/2016/06/03/images-as-x-axis-labels-updated/"> R – Irregularly Scheduled Programming</a></strong>, and kindly contributed to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.r-bloggers.com/">R-bloggers)</a> </div>
<p>They say “<i>if you want to find an answer on the internet, just present a wrong one as fact. Then wait.</i>“</p>
<p><span></span></p>
<p>It didn’t take long, actually. Despite my searches while trying to get <a target="_blank" href="http://jcarroll.com.au/2016/06/02/images-as-x-axis-labels/">images into x-axis labels</a> it seems I overlooked a working, <a target="_blank" href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14070953/photo-alignment-with-graph-in-r/14078391">significantly less hacky implementation</a>. My Google-fu had in fact let me down.</p>
<p>Baptiste Auguié (<a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/tpab">@tpab</a> / <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/baptiste">@baptiste</a>) had this working a while ago (seemingly before the <code>ggplot2</code> update that broke other methods), and in a definitively less hacky way. I’ve added a <a target="_blank" href="https://gist.github.com/jonocarroll/2f9490f1f5e7c82ef8b791a4b91fc9ca">new gist</a> (if you’re reading this on R-bloggers, the gist isn’t embedded, so either follow the link or view on my site) which implements it on the same graph as earlier, and I like this significantly more.</p>

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<div><div class="feedlyNoScript"><code>
<pre>Not Found</pre>
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<p>This method gets around the <code>element_text()</code> validation and updates the grobs in a way that’s above my pay grade/understanding of <code>ggplot2</code> internals, and is a much more consistent way to go about it. This also:</p>
<ul>
<li> places the factor labels on the graph along with the picture, covering some concerns about people not knowing which maps are for which country,</li>
<li> leaves room for the <code>caption</code> to go back in, which I wanted,</li>
<li> automatically scales the grob better,</li>
<li> doesn’t involve creating an external <code>grob</code> and thus turning off clipping; using <code>axis.text.x</code> is exactly what I was hoping for.</li>
</ul>
<div class="wp-caption"><a target="_blank" href="http://i2.wp.com/jcarroll.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/GDP_updated.png"><img alt="Updated version using @baptiste's method; much better." class="wp-image-953" src="http://i2.wp.com/jcarroll.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/GDP_updated.png?resize=680%2C425" data-recalc-dims="1"></a>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Updated version using @baptiste’s method; much better.</p>
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<p>My version worked (sort of) but only because it used options that were bad practice (not doubting that for a moment). I’d like to see this method make it into <code>ggplot2</code> properly; Baptiste had an <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2/issues/1240">open GitHub issue</a> involving it a while ago but it has since been closed, presumably without the feature being incorporated.</p>
<p>I started the previous post by saying how awesome open-source software is (e.g. <code>R</code>). You know what else is awesome? The #rstats community. Thank you to every one of you.</p>

<p><div><div><div><div data-width="55" data-show-faces="false" data-send="true" data-layout="box_count" data-height="62" data-href="http://www.r-bloggers.com/images-as-x-axis-labels-updated/"></div></div><div><a data-url="http://www.r-bloggers.com/images-as-x-axis-labels-updated/" data-counturl="http://www.r-bloggers.com/images-as-x-axis-labels-updated/" data-count="vertical" data-text="Images as x-axis labels (updated)" class="twitter-share-button" data-via="rbloggers" href="https://twitter.com/share"></a></div><div></div></div><div></div></div>

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