geom_textsmooth() doesn't choose method if not explicitly set

[ccsarapas]

geom_smooth() will choose a default smoothing method if one isn't specified, and ?geom_textpath says that it will also do this. But it actually issues a warning and returns a blank plot unless a method is explicitly set.

library(ggplot2)
library(geomtextpath)

## normal geom_smooth() behavior
ggplot(iris) +
  geom_smooth(
    aes(Sepal.Length, Sepal.Width, color = Species),
    se = FALSE
  )
# `geom_smooth()` using method = 'loess' and formula 'y ~ x'

## geom_textsmooth() yields warning and blank plot
ggplot(iris) +
  geom_textsmooth(
    aes(Sepal.Length, Sepal.Width, color = Species, label = Species),
    se = FALSE
  )
# `geom_smooth()` using formula 'y ~ x'
# Warning message:
# Computation failed in `stat_smooth()`:
# 'what' must be a function or character string 

## setting `method` = "loess" fixes it
ggplot(iris) +
  geom_textsmooth(
    aes(Sepal.Length, Sepal.Width, color = Species, label = Species),
    method = "loess",
    se = FALSE
  )
# `geom_smooth()` using formula 'y ~ x'

Software details:

OS Version: Windows 10 x64 (build 19044)
R Version: R version 4.1.2 (2021-11-01)
ggplot2 Version: 3.3.5
geomtextpath Version: 0.1.0

[teunbrand]

Hi there,

Thanks for the report, I can indeed confirm there is some kerfuffle around the method argument. I'll try to fix this soon-ish!

[teunbrand]

@AllanCameron only tangentially related to this; geom_textsmooth() never draws the standard error bands, but when a user sets se = TRUE, the position scales get trained with the +/- SE values. Should we just internally set se = FALSE?