Author: Baptiste Auguie
Date: 2017-09-09

# (Unofficial) overview of gtable

#### Baptiste Auguie

#### 2017-09-09

The R package `gtable` is designed to help construct and manipulate layouts containing graphical elements. The standard `grid` package in R provides low-level functions to define viewports, and place graphical elements (grobs) at specific locations within the device window. `gtable` builds upon these functions and provides a higher-level interface, where one can e.g. merge two layouts, add columns, rows, insert graphical elements in a given cell, and change the display order, among other things.

The `gtable` package is used internally by `ggplot2`, and can therefore be used to modify the layout of such plots.

### Constructing a gtable

A `gtable` object can be constructed in a variety of ways,

- Empty table

    gtable(unit(1:3, c("cm")), unit(5, "cm"))

This is an empty table with 3 rows and one column. `gtable_col` and `gtable_row` provide a simplified interface for 1 column or 1 row layouts, respectively.

- matrix layout of grobs

    a <- rectGrob(gp = gpar(fill = "red"))
    b <- grobTree(rectGrob(), textGrob("new\ncell"))
    c <- ggplotGrob(qplot(1:10,1:10))
    d <- linesGrob()
    mat <- matrix(list(a, b, c, d), nrow = 2)
    g <- gtable_matrix(name = "demo", grobs = mat,
                       widths = unit(c(2, 4), "cm"),
                       heights = unit(c(2, 5), c("in", "lines")))
    g

    ## TableGrob (2 x 2) "demo": 4 grobs
    ##   z     cells name                  grob
    ## 1 1 (1-1,1-1) demo   rect[GRID.rect.583]
    ## 2 2 (2-2,1-1) demo gTree[GRID.gTree.584]
    ## 3 3 (1-1,2-2) demo        gtable[layout]
    ## 4 4 (2-2,2-2) demo lines[GRID.lines.629]

Actual drawing of the gtable on a graphics device is performed with `grid.draw()`; note that `plot()` is only defined for debugging purposes, it adds a light grey background and thin grid lines to help visualise the scene in its drawing context.

    plot(g)

    grid.newpage()
    grid.draw(g)

The gridExtra package provides a few conventient constructor functions, e.g.

- based on `grid.arrange`

    dummy_grob <- function(id)  {
      grobTree(rectGrob(gp=gpar(fill=id, alpha=0.5)), textGrob(id))
    }
    gs <- lapply(1:9, dummy_grob)
    grid.arrange(ncol=4, grobs=gs,
                   top="top\nlabel", bottom="bottom\nlabel",
                   left="left\nlabel", right="right\nlabel")
    grid.rect(gp=gpar(fill=NA))

- with a pre-defined layout

    gt <- arrangeGrob(grobs=gs, layout_matrix=rbind(c(1,1,1,2,3),
                                               c(1,1,1,4,5),
                                               c(6,7,8,9,9)))
    grid.draw(gt)
    grid.rect(gp=gpar(fill=NA))

### Components of a gtable

Let’s have a closer look at the gtable we created earlier.

    print(g)

    ## TableGrob (2 x 2) "demo": 4 grobs
    ##   z     cells name                  grob
    ## 1 1 (1-1,1-1) demo   rect[GRID.rect.583]
    ## 2 2 (2-2,1-1) demo gTree[GRID.gTree.584]
    ## 3 3 (1-1,2-2) demo        gtable[layout]
    ## 4 4 (2-2,2-2) demo lines[GRID.lines.629]

    names(g)

    ##  [1] "grobs"         "layout"        "widths"        "heights"
    ##  [5] "respect"       "rownames"      "colnames"      "name"
    ##  [9] "gp"            "vp"            "children"      "childrenOrder"

Other useful characteristics of the gtable are,

    length(g); nrow(g); ncol(g)

    ## [1] 4

    ## [1] 2

    ## [1] 2

where we note the dual nature of a gtable: it looks like a matrix, in the sense that it defines a rectangular table of nrow x ncol cells, but it’s also a list with an arbitrary length, defining where and how many grobs are to be placed in this tabular layout.

The most important components are,

- `grobs`: This is a list of grobs of `length(g)`. Grobs are placed in the tabular layout defined by the gtable, and multiple grobs can overlap and/or be stacked in the same cell(s).

    length(g$grobs)

    ## [1] 4

- `layout`: this is a data.frame indicating the position of each grob.

    g$layout

    ##   t l b r z clip name
    ## 1 1 1 1 1 1   on demo
    ## 2 2 1 2 1 2   on demo
    ## 3 1 2 1 2 3   on demo
    ## 4 2 2 2 2 4   on demo

The z-column is used to define the drawing order of the grobs, which becomes relevant when multiple grobs are stacked on top of each others. * `widths` and `heights`: this is the size description of the cells, given as grid units.

    g$widths; g$heights

    ## [1] 2cm 4cm

    ## [1] 2in    5lines

### Modifying a gtable

The gtable package defines several high-level functions to operate on a gtable object,

- `t.gtable` to transpose the layout (future versions may support more general rotations)

- `[.gtable*`, `gtable_filter`, `gtable_trim` to extract a portion of the gtable

- `cbind.gtable*`, `rbind.gtable*` to combine 2 gtable objects (particularly useful for aligning multiple ggplots)

- `gtable_add_cols`, `gtable_add_rows`,`gtable_add_col_space`, `gtable_add_row_space`, `gtable_add_padding`, `gtable_col_spacer`, `gtable_row_spacer`

Manual operations at the low-level on the gtable can involve the grobs or the layout, but care should be taken to keep the two consistent (e.g. make sure that the length of both are in sync).

#### Examples to alter ggplot2 plots with gtable

The `gtable` tag on Stack Overlfow has several real-life examples using gtable to alter a ggplot2 before drawing.

- aligning (multiple) ggplot objects on a device, another use-case scenario, aligning base plot and ggplot

- adding new grobs aligned with the plot panel, also this one

- calculate the device size based on the plot aspect ratio

- add new axes to a facet_grid layout, or a second axis