Alternatives to using text() to adding text to a plot

Question

This may be a naive question, but I was wondering if there's a better way than using text() to adding text to a plot. Note, I'm also using layout() as well. Specifically, I have a section of a plot where I would like to add some text with headings followed by regular text.

text() is fine it seems for simple annotations, but to get the spacing right for several lines of text seems to require a lot of manual manipulation of the x and y and cex parameters. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Here are some alternative options to consider:
- the gplots package has a textplot function to add some text output in a base graphics plot.
- plotrix has a function addtable2plot
- for grid graphics grid.text() is available and in gridExtra there is a function grid.table() (see, e.g., R-Wiki)

Answer 2

If you're using base graphics, then text() is probably your best bet, and fiddling with coordinates etc is part of the game. If you want to learn a new framework, the lattice package is a reworking of the basic approach to plotting in R. It be installed by default so help(package='lattice') will get you started.

Here's a pretty good guide (pdf) to graphics in general in R, with a substantial section on lattice: download