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subplot() not producing the interactive equivalent of gridExtra::grid.arrange()

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
r

Research direction

Start with the reproduced ggplotly() and subplot() calls in the issue, comparing their output with grid.arrange(). Trace how subplot() handles multiple plot titles, shared axes, and axis titles. Done means the four converted plots retain the expected titles and axes in a two-row interactive arrangement, or the behavior is documented as a limitation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Given:

    library(ggplot2)
    library(gridExtra)
    library(plotly)
    library(colorRamps)
    
    d <- data.frame(x=sample(1:10)/10, y=sample(1:10)/10, z=sample(1:10)/10, c=sample(LETTERS[1:5],size=10,replace=TRUE))
    g1 <- ggplot(d) +
      geom_point(aes(x=x, y=y, fill = z),
                 pch=21,size=4) +
      facet_wrap(~c,labeller = label_both) +
      scale_fill_gradientn(colors = matlab.like2(16),limits=c(0, 100)) +
      xlim(c(0,1)) + ylim(c(0,1)) +
      coord_fixed(ratio = 1) +
      theme(legend.position=c(0.85,0.2), legend.background=element_blank()) +
      labs(fill = "%")
    
    g2<- g1+ggtitle("Plot 2")
    g3<- g1+gtitle("Plot 3")
    g4<- g1+ggtitle("Plot 4")
    g1<- g1+ggtitle("Plot 1")
    p = list(g1,g2,g3,g4) %>% map(~.x + labs(x=NULL, y=NULL))
    yleft= "X"
    xbottom= "Y"
    grid.arrange(grobs=p,bottom = xbottom, left = yleft,nrow=2)

Image

I want to get the same plot but with interactive browsing of the values. I try:

pg1 <- ggplotly(g1)
pg2 <- ggplotly(g2)
pg3 <- ggplotly(g3)
pg4 <- ggplotly(g4)

Individual plots are ok:

pg1

Image

But

subplot(list(pg1, pg2,pg3,pg4), nrows=2, 
        shareX=FALSE, shareY=FALSE,titleX=TRUE,titleY=TRUE)

or

subplot(list(pg1, pg2,pg3,pg4), nrows=2, 
        shareX=FALSE, shareY=FALSE,titleX=FALSE,titleY=FALSE)

result into:

Image

Which is almost good but displays only 1 title (and in the wrong place) and no axes titles.

I try

subplot(list(pg1, pg2,pg3,pg4), nrows=2, 
        shareX=TRUE, shareY=TRUE,titleX=FALSE,titleY=FALSE)

and

subplot(list(pg1, pg2,pg3,pg4), nrows=2, 
        shareX=TRUE, shareY=TRUE,titleX=TRUE,titleY=TRUE)

and the result is even worse:

Image

Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? Is there an alternative way to get the interactive version of the grid?

Dominant language
R
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