Line breaks in y-tick labels on horizontal bar chart

[e-mitchell]

On a horizontal barplot, trying to shorten y-tick labels using <br> line breaks leaves too much room for the label.

Here's an example of a long label (no line breaks):

library(plotly)

long_label = "Dinner (or, super long label to check out some line breaks in plotly)"

dat1 <- data.frame(
  sex = factor(c("Female","Female","Male","Male")),
  time = factor(c("Lunch",long_label,"Lunch",long_label), levels=c("Lunch",long_label)),
  total_bill = c(13.53, 16.81, 16.24, 17.42)
)

p <- ggplot(data=dat1, aes(x=time, y=total_bill, fill=sex)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity", position=position_dodge()) + 
  coord_flip() + theme_bw()

p <- ggplotly(p)
ggplotly(p)

After adding line breaks in the labels, the plot stays squished to the right:

library(plotly)

long_label = "Dinner (or, super long label<br>to check out some<br>line breaks in plotly)"

dat1 <- data.frame(
  sex = factor(c("Female","Female","Male","Male")),
  time = factor(c("Lunch",long_label,"Lunch",long_label), levels=c("Lunch",long_label)),
  total_bill = c(13.53, 16.81, 16.24, 17.42)
)

p <- ggplot(data=dat1, aes(x=time, y=total_bill, fill=sex)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity", position=position_dodge()) + 
  coord_flip() + theme_bw()

p <- ggplotly(p)
ggplotly(p)

When it should look more like this (but with the rest of the label):

I think the issue might have something to do with the way that 'nchar' in the ggplotly function is counting characters of each tick label, without splitting by <br> first.

Thanks for looking into this!

[cpsievert]

Not ideal, but you can use layout(ggplotly(p), list(l = 50)) to control the left-margin

[e-mitchell]

Thanks for the suggestion. I couldn't get the layout to work directly on the ggplotly object, but I was able to tweak it using theme(plot.margin) applied to the ggplot object instead:

p <- ggplot(data=dat1, aes(x=time, y=total_bill, fill=sex)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity", position=position_dodge()) + 
  coord_flip() + theme_bw() +
  theme(plot.margin = margin(l = -200))

ggplotly(p) 

I'm embedding this graphic in a Shiny app, so it would be nice if the adjustment were automatic. For now, I'll play around with the numbers and see if I can make a pseudo-automated margin adjustment based on the plot label length.

[cpsievert]

Whoops, it's actually layout(ggplotly(p), list(margin = list(l = 50)))