I am creating a timeline plot, but running into a problem in positions where the values to plot are too close together to print the text without overlap. The simplest way I can think of to solve this (although there may be other ways?) is to create a new numeric vector whose values are as close as possible to the original vector, but spread out to a given minimum difference. For example, take the following vector:
> x <- c(1,2,seq(2.1,2.3,0.1),3,4) > x [1] 1.0 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.0 4.0 > However, suppose I don't want to plot any of these points with less than 0.5 between them. The problem could be solved by a function that behaved something like this: > x2 <- spread(x,mindiff=0.5) > x2 [1] 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 4.0 Or for a minimum difference of 0.2, > x2 <- spread(x,mindiff=0.2) > x2 [1] 1.0 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 3.0 4.0 Thus, if there is a cluster of close values, spreading the values may require changing values which previously weren't too close to their nearest neighbors. Then I could use segments() to draw lines from the timeline to where the shifted text is printed, labeling tics on the timeline accurately but keeping the text from overlapping. Any ideas on how to program this or how to do it using built-in functions would be greatly appreciated. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.