ribiosPlot (version 1.3.0)

fcbrewer: Factor color brewer

Description

The function generates a vector of color names for a factor(-like) object.

Usage

fcbrewer(factor, panel = "Set1")

Value

An fcol object encoding colors matching the factors as well as the base colors. The latter is often needed in figure legends.

Arguments

factor

A vector of factors. Non-factors will be cast to factors by calling the factor function.

panel

This parameter can take three types of values: (1) a color set name defined in brewer.pal.info in the RColorBrewer package, (2) a function (or the name of a function) that takes an integer as input and returns a vector of colors that will be used as the base colors of levels of the factor, or (3) a character vector which represents the base colors. In the last case, the length of the vector must match the number of levels of the factor. See examples below.

Author

Jitao David Zhang <[e-mail]>

Details

When using brewer.pal to generate palettes, the panel is automatically expanded using colorRampPalette when the number of levels of the input factor exceeds the limit of respective panel. This is done automatically.

See Also

brewer.pal.info for color panels.

Examples

testFactor <- gl(4,25)
testCol1 <- fcbrewer(testFactor, panel="Set2")
testCol2 <- fcbrewer(testFactor, panel=heat.colors)
testCol3 <- fcbrewer(testFactor, panel="heat.colors")
testCol4 <- fcbrewer(testFactor, panel=c("black", "green", "orange", "lightblue"))

testRan <- runif(100)
## use colors of each item and colors of each level
plot(testRan, pch=21, bg=testCol1)
legend("topright", legend=paste("Class", 1:4),
       pch=21, pt.bg=fcbase(testCol1))

## boxplot uses colors matching to each level only
boxplot(testRan ~ testFactor, col=fcbase(testCol1))