Layers inheriting aesthetics at the stage or whole aesthetic level #4491
Description
Hi, everyone. I don't think there is an answer per se to this question, but I ran across an issue when I wanted to create the following side-by-side jitter and boxplot:
library(ggplot2)
ggplot(iris,
aes(x = Species, y = Sepal.Length)) +
geom_jitter(aes(x = stage(start = Species, after_scale = x - 0.1)),
width = 0.05) +
geom_boxplot(width = 0.1,
position = position_nudge(x = 0.1),
outlier.alpha = 0)
Created on 2021-05-24 by the reprex package (v0.3.0.9001)
Basically, I wanted the plots to be centered on the tick marks, which required a nudge in opposite directions for each. The boxplot was easiest with the use of position_nudge. The stripchart was a little more difficult, given the fact that there is no built-in position_jitternudge. The fairly recent addition of our ability to manipulate the aesthetic mapping stages makes this possible, however, by specifying a manual nudge in the after_scale step. Notice, however, that I have to repeat the start aesthetic mapping, even though aesthetic inheriting is on for the geom_point layer (by default). To illustrate that I need to specify it, here's a reprex of just specifying the after_scale part (this was my initial try at the plot, where I incorrectly assumed the start stage would be inherited):
library(ggplot2)
ggplot(iris,
aes(x = Species, y = Sepal.Length)) +
geom_jitter(aes(x = after_scale(x - 0.1)),
width = 0.05) +
geom_boxplot(width = 0.1,
position = position_nudge(x = 0.1),
outlier.alpha = 0)
#> Error: geom_point requires the following missing aesthetics: xCreated on 2021-05-24 by the reprex package (v0.3.0.9001)
In summary: it appears that aesthetic inheritance, and overriding them, happens at the whole mapping level, rather than at the individual stage level. So here's my question: Would it make sense to allow for overriding inherited aesthetics at the individual stage levels to avoid duplicate mapping specifications?