From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Tue Aug 12 20:48:04 2008
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:48:04 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Rd] wishlist: par(ann=FALSE) applied to hist?
In-Reply-To: <48A1B69B.7010905@zoology.ufl.edu>
References: <48A1B69B.7010905@zoology.ufl.edu>
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0808121928330.669@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>

On Tue, 12 Aug 2008, Ben Bolker wrote:

> par(ann=FALSE) appears to have no effect on
> hist.default; it would be nice if it did ...
> (boxplot, which plots via bxp, which calls
> internal do_title, does -- in a quick search
> I can't figure out where the value of ann
> takes effect ...)

>From the ?par:

      'ann' If set to 'FALSE', high-level plotting functions calling
           'plot.default' do not annotate the plots they produce with
           axis titles and overall titles.  The default is to do
           annotation.

So strictly this is correct, as plot.histogram does not call plot.default. 
The par is only used at R level, as a default for an argument in 
plot.default and never as an in-line parameter.

So I think what you are asking for is a 'ann' argument to plot.histogram, 
which would then be passed down from hist().  The only issue then is if 
par("ann") should set the default, and the current documentation says not.

Does that meet your needs?

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595



[Rd] wishlist: par(ann=FALSE) applied to hist?
Prof Brian Ripley