A Schola Empirica ggplot2 theme

A wrapper around theme() which provides several shortcuts to setting common options and several defaults. See more in Details.

Usage

theme_schola(
  gridlines = c("y", "x", "both", "scatter"),
  base_size = 11,
  family = "Ubuntu Condensed",
  title_family = "Ubuntu",
  margins = TRUE,
  plot.title.position = "plot",
  axis_titles = TRUE,
  multiplot = FALSE,
  ...
)

Arguments

gridlines

Whether to display major gridlines along "y" (the default), "x", "both" or draw a "scatter", which has both gridlines and inverted colours.

base_size

Numeric text size in pts, affects all text in plot. Defaults to 11.

family, title_family

font family to use for the (title of the) plot. Defaults to "Ubuntu" for title and "Ubuntu Condensed" for plot.

margins

logical, whether to draw margins around the plot or not (the default).

plot.title.position

where to align the title. Either "plot" (the default, difference from theme() default) or "panel".

axis_titles

logical, draw axis titles? Defaults to TRUE.

multiplot

if set to TRUE, provides better styling for small multiples created using facet_*.

...

Arguments passed on to ggplot2::theme

line: all line elements (element_line())
rect: all rectangular elements (element_rect())
title: all title elements: plot, axes, legends (element_text(); inherits from text)
point: all point elements (element_point())
polygon: all polygon elements (element_polygon())
geom: defaults for geoms (element_geom())
spacing: all spacings (unit())
aspect.ratio: aspect ratio of the panel
axis.text,axis.text.x,axis.text.y,axis.text.x.top,axis.text.x.bottom,axis.text.y.left,axis.text.y.right,axis.text.theta,axis.text.r: tick labels along axes (element_text()). Specify all axis tick labels (axis.text), tick labels by plane (using axis.text.x or axis.text.y), or individually for each axis (using axis.text.x.bottom, axis.text.x.top, axis.text.y.left, axis.text.y.right). axis.text.*.* inherits from axis.text.* which inherits from axis.text, which in turn inherits from text
axis.ticks,axis.ticks.x,axis.ticks.x.top,axis.ticks.x.bottom,axis.ticks.y,axis.ticks.y.left,axis.ticks.y.right,axis.ticks.theta,axis.ticks.r: tick marks along axes (element_line()). Specify all tick marks (axis.ticks), ticks by plane (using axis.ticks.x or axis.ticks.y), or individually for each axis (using axis.ticks.x.bottom, axis.ticks.x.top, axis.ticks.y.left, axis.ticks.y.right). axis.ticks.*.* inherits from axis.ticks.* which inherits from axis.ticks, which in turn inherits from line
axis.minor.ticks.x.top,axis.minor.ticks.x.bottom,axis.minor.ticks.y.left,axis.minor.ticks.y.right,axis.minor.ticks.theta,axis.minor.ticks.r: minor tick marks along axes (element_line()). axis.minor.ticks.*.* inherit from the corresponding major ticks axis.ticks.*.*.
axis.ticks.length,axis.ticks.length.x,axis.ticks.length.x.top,axis.ticks.length.x.bottom,axis.ticks.length.y,axis.ticks.length.y.left,axis.ticks.length.y.right,axis.ticks.length.theta,axis.ticks.length.r: length of tick marks (unit). axis.ticks.length inherits from spacing.
axis.minor.ticks.length,axis.minor.ticks.length.x,axis.minor.ticks.length.x.top,axis.minor.ticks.length.x.bottom,axis.minor.ticks.length.y,axis.minor.ticks.length.y.left,axis.minor.ticks.length.y.right,axis.minor.ticks.length.theta,axis.minor.ticks.length.r: length of minor tick marks (unit), or relative to axis.ticks.length when provided with rel().
axis.line,axis.line.x,axis.line.x.top,axis.line.x.bottom,axis.line.y,axis.line.y.left,axis.line.y.right,axis.line.theta,axis.line.r: lines along axes (element_line()). Specify lines along all axes (axis.line), lines for each plane (using axis.line.x or axis.line.y), or individually for each axis (using axis.line.x.bottom, axis.line.x.top, axis.line.y.left, axis.line.y.right). axis.line.*.* inherits from axis.line.* which inherits from axis.line, which in turn inherits from line
legend.background: background of legend (element_rect(); inherits from rect)
legend.margin: the margin around each legend (margin()); inherits from margins.
legend.spacing,legend.spacing.x,legend.spacing.y: the spacing between legends (unit). legend.spacing.x & legend.spacing.y inherit from legend.spacing or can be specified separately. legend.spacing inherits from spacing.
legend.key: background underneath legend keys (element_rect(); inherits from rect)
legend.key.size,legend.key.height,legend.key.width: size of legend keys (unit); key background height & width inherit from legend.key.size or can be specified separately. In turn legend.key.size inherits from spacing.
legend.key.spacing,legend.key.spacing.x,legend.key.spacing.y: spacing between legend keys given as a unit. Spacing in the horizontal (x) and vertical (y) direction inherit from legend.key.spacing or can be specified separately. legend.key.spacing inherits from spacing.
legend.key.justification: Justification for positioning legend keys when more space is available than needed for display. The default, NULL, stretches keys into the available space. Can be a location like "center" or "top", or a two-element numeric vector.
legend.frame: frame drawn around the bar (element_rect()).
legend.ticks: tick marks shown along bars or axes (element_line())
legend.ticks.length: length of tick marks in legend (unit()); inherits from legend.key.size.
legend.axis.line: lines along axes in legends (element_line())
legend.text: legend item labels (element_text(); inherits from text)
legend.text.position: placement of legend text relative to legend keys or bars ("top", "right", "bottom" or "left"). The legend text placement might be incompatible with the legend's direction for some guides.
legend.title: title of legend (element_text(); inherits from title)
legend.title.position: placement of legend title relative to the main legend ("top", "right", "bottom" or "left").
legend.position: the default position of legends ("none", "left", "right", "bottom", "top", "inside")
legend.position.inside: A numeric vector of length two setting the placement of legends that have the "inside" position.
legend.direction: layout of items in legends ("horizontal" or "vertical")
legend.byrow: whether the legend-matrix is filled by columns (FALSE, the default) or by rows (TRUE).
legend.justification: anchor point for positioning legend inside plot ("center" or two-element numeric vector) or the justification according to the plot area when positioned outside the plot
legend.justification.top,legend.justification.bottom,legend.justification.left,legend.justification.right,legend.justification.inside: Same as legend.justification but specified per legend.position option.
legend.location: Relative placement of legends outside the plot as a string. Can be "panel" (default) to align legends to the panels or "plot" to align legends to the plot as a whole.
legend.box: arrangement of multiple legends ("horizontal" or "vertical")
legend.box.just: justification of each legend within the overall bounding box, when there are multiple legends ("top", "bottom", "left", "right", "center" or "centre")
legend.box.margin: margins around the full legend area, as specified using margin(); inherits from margins.
legend.box.background: background of legend area (element_rect(); inherits from rect)
legend.box.spacing: The spacing between the plotting area and the legend box (unit); inherits from spacing.
panel.border: border around plotting area, drawn on top of plot so that it covers tick marks and grid lines. This should be used with fill = NA (element_rect(); inherits from rect)
panel.spacing,panel.spacing.x,panel.spacing.y: spacing between facet panels (unit). panel.spacing.x & panel.spacing.y inherit from panel.spacing or can be specified separately. panel.spacing inherits from spacing.
panel.ontop: option to place the panel (background, gridlines) over the data layers (logical). Usually used with a transparent or blank panel.background.
panel.widths,panel.heights: Sizes for panels (units). Can be a single unit to set the total size for the panel area, or a unit vector to set the size of individual panels.
plot.background: background of the entire plot (element_rect(); inherits from rect)
plot.title.position,plot.caption.position: Alignment of the plot title/subtitle and caption. The setting for plot.title.position applies to both the title and the subtitle. A value of "panel" (the default) means that titles and/or caption are aligned to the plot panels. A value of "plot" means that titles and/or caption are aligned to the entire plot (minus any space for margins and plot tag).
plot.subtitle: plot subtitle (text appearance) (element_text(); inherits from title) left-aligned by default
plot.caption: caption below the plot (text appearance) (element_text(); inherits from title) right-aligned by default
plot.tag: upper-left label to identify a plot (text appearance) (element_text(); inherits from title) left-aligned by default
plot.tag.position: The position of the tag as a string ("topleft", "top", "topright", "left", "right", "bottomleft", "bottom", "bottomright") or a coordinate. If a coordinate, can be a numeric vector of length 2 to set the x,y-coordinate relative to the whole plot. The coordinate option is unavailable for plot.tag.location = "margin".
plot.tag.location: The placement of the tag as a string, one of "panel", "plot" or "margin". Respectively, these will place the tag inside the panel space, anywhere in the plot as a whole, or in the margin around the panel space.
strip.clip: should strip background edges and strip labels be clipped to the extend of the strip background? Options are "on" to clip, "off" to disable clipping or "inherit" (default) to take the clipping setting from the parent viewport.
strip.placement: placement of strip with respect to axes, either "inside" or "outside". Only important when axes and strips are on the same side of the plot.
strip.text,strip.text.x,strip.text.y,strip.text.x.top,strip.text.x.bottom,strip.text.y.left,strip.text.y.right: facet labels (element_text(); inherits from text). Horizontal facet labels (strip.text.x) & vertical facet labels (strip.text.y) inherit from strip.text or can be specified separately. Facet strips have dedicated position-dependent theme elements (strip.text.x.top, strip.text.x.bottom, strip.text.y.left, strip.text.y.right) that inherit from strip.text.x and strip.text.y, respectively. As a consequence, some theme stylings need to be applied to the position-dependent elements rather than to the parent elements
strip.switch.pad.grid,strip.switch.pad.wrap: space between strips and axes when strips are switched (unit); inherits from spacing.
complete: set this to TRUE if this is a complete theme, such as the one returned by theme_grey(). Complete themes behave differently when added to a ggplot object. Also, when setting complete = TRUE all elements will be set to inherit from blank elements.
validate: TRUE to run check_element(), FALSE to bypass checks.

Value

a ggtheme object

Details

In particular, the theme: - displays only major gridlines, allowing you to quickly switch which ones; gridlines are thinner, panel has white background

provides quick option to draw a scatter with grey background - switches defaults for title alignment - turns axis labels off by default: in practice, x axes are often obvious and y axes are better documented in a subtitle - sets backgrounds to a schola-style shade - sets plot title in bold and 120% of base_size

All the changed defaults can be overriden by another call to theme().

See "Making charts" vignette for more complex examples: vignette('charts', package = 'reschola').

Note

The default fonts - Ubuntu and Ubuntu Condensed - are contained in this package and can be registered with the system using register_reschola_fonts(). You should then install them onto your system like any font, using files in the directories described in the register_reschola_fonts() messsage.

Examples

library(ggplot2)

# NOTE when `theme_schola()` is used in these examples, fonts
# are set to 'sans' to pass checks on computers without the
# Ubuntu included. If you have these fonts (see Note) you can
# leave these parameters at their default values.

use_reschola_fonts("sans")

# the basic plot for illustration, theme not used

p <- ggplot(mpg) +
  geom_bar(aes(y = class)) +
  labs(title = "Lots of cars", subtitle = "Count of numbers")

# using `theme_schola()` defaults

p +
  theme_schola("x", family = "sans", title_family = "sans")


# in combination with `flush_axis`:

p +
  theme_schola("x", family = "sans", title_family = "sans") +
  scale_x_continuous(expand = flush_axis)


# scatter

ggplot(mpg) +
  geom_point(aes(cty, hwy)) +
  theme_schola("scatter", family = "sans", title_family = "sans") +
  labs(title = "Lots of cars", subtitle = "Point by point")


# Smaller text, flush alignment

ggplot(mpg) +
  geom_point(aes(cty, hwy)) +
  theme_schola("scatter",
    base_size = 9, family = "sans", title_family = "sans"
  ) +
  labs(title = "Lots of cars", subtitle = "Point by point")


# Override defaults changed inside `theme_schola()`

ggplot(mpg) +
  geom_point(aes(cty, hwy)) +
  theme_schola("scatter",
    base_size = 9, family = "sans", title_family = "sans"
  ) +
  labs(title = "Lots of cars", subtitle = "Point by point") +
  theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = "lightpink"))