create an arrow with gradient color

Question

how can I create an arrow or segment with gradient color using R?

Answer 1

I think Jim Lemon should be automagically bestowed 10K, maybe even 20K, rep points on SO just by virtue of all his work over the years creating base-graphics solutions. The guy is amazing. Time and again someone will ask for something on Rhelp, and he will whip up a solution. Here's "random rainbow" courtesy of the help page:

require(plotrix)
x<-c(0,cumsum(rnorm(99)))
 y<-c(0,cumsum(rnorm(99)))
 xydist<-sqrt(x*x+y*y)
 plot(x,y,main="Random walk plot",xlab="X",ylab="Y",type="n")
 color.scale.lines(x,y,c(1,1,0),0,c(0,1,1),colvar=xydist,lwd=2)

Answer 2

Try this,

library(grid)

png("mask.png")
grid.polygon(c(-0.06, 0.06, 0.06, 0.15, 0, -0.15, -0.06),
             c(-5, -5, 2.5, 2, 5, 2, 2.5), gp=gpar(fill="black"),
             def="native",
             vp=viewport(xs=c(-0.15, 0.15), ys=c(-5, 5)))
dev.off()

library(png)
m <- readPNG("mask.png", native=FALSE)
mask <- matrix(rgb(m[,,1],m[,,2],m[,,3]),
               nrow=nrow(m))

rmat <- matrix(rgb(colorRamp(c("blue","white","red"))(seq(0,1,length=nrow(m))), maxColorValue=255),
               nrow=nrow(m), ncol=ncol(m))
rmat[mask == "#FFFFFF"] <- NA
grid.newpage()
grid.raster(rmat)

Edit: you can reuse it in a plot, e.g.

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(iris) + geom_path(aes(Sepal.Length, Petal.Length, colour = Petal.Width)) +
  guides(colour = guide_colourbar()) +
  annotation_custom(rasterGrob(rmat, width=unit(1,"npc"), height=unit(1, "npc")),
                    x = 6, xmax=6.2, y=2.5, ymax=4)