From bolker at zoology.ufl.edu  Tue Aug 12 20:58:06 2008
From: bolker at zoology.ufl.edu (Ben Bolker)
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:58:06 -0400
Subject: [Rd] wishlist: par(ann=FALSE) applied to hist?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0808121928330.669@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
References: <48A1B69B.7010905@zoology.ufl.edu>
	<alpine.LFD.1.10.0808121928330.669@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <48A1DD3E.50901@zoology.ufl.edu>

Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> 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?
> 

   Hmm.   I understand that this isn't a bug (I didn't claim it was) --
the ideal behavior would be for hist() to produce a plot without
annotation when par("ann") was FALSE.  That's distinct from
hist(x,ann=FALSE) [which would be equivalent, I guess, to
hist(x,xlab="",ylab="",main="")], which isn't as useful,
unless the default were set to par("ann") ...
(and yes, I realize that would change user-visible behavior).
This isn't at all necessary, just something that would change
R's behavior in the direction of my naive expectations (which
I might share with other users ... ?)

   cheers
     Ben



[Rd] wishlist: par(ann=FALSE) applied to hist?
Ben Bolker