How can I add a background grid using ggplot2?

Question

I'd like to add background grid to the center of the plot and then hide the standard gridlines. The corner points of the grid are stored in the pts data frame and I've tried using geom_tile, but it doesn't appear to use the specified points. Thanks in advance for your help.

library(ggplot2)  
pts <- data.frame(
        x=c(170,170,170,177.5,177.5,177.5,185,185,185), 
        y=c(-35,-25,-15,-35,-25,-15,-35,-25,-15))  
ggplot(quakes, aes(long, lat)) + 
    geom_point(shape = 1) + 
    geom_tile(data=pts,aes(x=x,y=y),fill="transparent",colour="black") +
    opts(
        panel.grid.major=theme_blank(),
        panel.grid.minor=theme_blank()
    )

Answer 1

you can manually specify the breaks:

ggplot(quakes, aes(long, lat)) + geom_point(shape = 1) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = c(170, 177.5, 185)) +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks = c(-35, -25, -15)) +
  opts(panel.grid.minor = theme_blank(), 
       panel.grid.major = theme_line("black", size = 0.1))

then, is this what you want?

pts <- data.frame(x=c(170, 170, 170, 170, 177.5, 185), 
                  y=c(-35, -25, -15, -35, -35, -35),
                  xend=c(185, 185, 185, 170, 177.5, 185),
                  yend=c(-35, -25, -15, -15, -15, -15))
ggplot(quakes, aes(long, lat)) + geom_point(shape = 1) + 
   geom_segment(data=pts, aes(x, y, xend=xend, yend=yend)) +
   opts(panel.grid.minor = theme_blank(), 
        panel.grid.major = theme_blank())

Answer 2

Not elegant but this is something quick and dirty that I came up with. Unfortunately I can't stop the line at a certain point, it just goes all the way to the edge.

ggplot(quakes, aes(long, lat)) + geom_point(shape = 1)
 + opts(panel.grid.major=theme_blank(),
        panel.grid.minor=theme_blank())
 + geom_vline(aes(xintercept =seq(165,185,by=5)))
 + geom_hline(aes(yintercept=seq(-35,-15,by=5)))