Multicolor titles with ggplot2 for R

Question

I was trying to implement multicolor texts as shown here:

multicolor text on chart

which referenced this:

multicolor text in R

This is what I came up with (with help from here):

require(ggplot2)
require(grid)
png(file="multicolortitle.png",width=800,height=500)
qplot(x = hp,y = mpg,data = mtcars,color=factor(mtcars$cyl),size=2) +
  scale_colour_manual(values = c("red3","green3","blue3")) + 
  theme_bw() +
  opts(title = " \n ") +
  opts(legend.position = "none") 
spacing  <- 20
grid.text(0.5, unit(1,"npc") - unit(1,"line"), 
          label=paste("4 cylinder,",paste(rep(" ",spacing*2), collapse='')),
          gp=gpar(col="red3", fontsize=16,fontface="bold"))
grid.text(0.5, unit(1,"npc") - unit(1,"line"), 
          label=paste(paste(rep(" ",spacing), collapse=''),"6 cylinder,",
            paste(rep(" ",spacing), collapse='')),
          gp=gpar(col="green3", fontsize=16,fontface="bold"))
grid.text(0.5, unit(1,"npc") - unit(1,"line"), 
          label=paste(paste(rep(" ",spacing*2), collapse=''),"8 cylinder"),
          gp=gpar(col="blue3", fontsize=16,fontface="bold"))
grid.text(0.5, unit(1,"npc") - unit(2,"line"), 
          label=paste(paste(rep(" ",spacing*0), collapse=''),
            "- Horsepower versus Miles per Gallon"),
          gp=gpar(col="black", fontsize=16,fontface="bold"))
dev.off()

Here's the resulting graph:

So, my question: is there a more elegant method to use for this? I'd like to be able to use ggsave for example, and creating the spacing for this is a highly manual process - not suited for scenarios where I need to automatically make hundreds of plots of this nature. I could see writing some functions on top of this, but maybe there's a better way to implement the methods utilized with the base plotting function?

Answer 1

A possible strategy wrapping the words in a dummy table,

library(gridExtra)
library(grid)
library(ggplot2)
title = c('Concentration of ','affluence',' and ','poverty',' nationwide')
colors = c('black', '#EEB422','black', '#238E68','black')

grid.arrange(ggplot(), 
             top = tableGrob(t(title), 
                             theme=ttheme_minimal(padding=unit(c(0,2),'mm'),
                                                  base_colour = colors)))

enter image description here

Answer 2

Here's a more general approach that takes advantage of a few additional grid functions. It's not particularly well-polished, but it may give you some useful ideas:

library(grid)
library(ggplot2)

p <- ggplot(data=mtcars, aes(mpg,hp,color=factor(cyl),size=2)) + 
       geom_point() + theme_bw() +
       opts(title = " \n ") + opts(legend.position="none")

## Get factor levels 
levs <- levels(factor(mtcars$cyl))
n <- length(levs)

## Get factors' plotting colors
g <- ggplot_build(p)
d <- unique(g$data[[1]][c("colour", "group")])
cols <- d$colour[order(d$group)]

## Use widest label's width to determine spacing
labs <- paste(levs, "cylinder")
xlocs <- unit(0.5, "npc") + 
         1.1 * (seq_len(n) - mean(seq_len(n))) * max(unit(1, "strwidth", labs))

## Plot labels in top 10% of device
pushViewport(viewport(y=0.95, height=0.1))
    grid.text(paste(levs, "cylinder"), 
              x = xlocs, y=unit(0.5, "lines"), 
              gp = gpar(col=cols, fontface="bold"))
    grid.text("- Horsepower versus Miles per Gallon", 
              y = unit(-0.5, "lines"))
upViewport()

## Plot main figure in bottom 90% of device
pushViewport(viewport(y=0.45, height=0.9))
    print(p, newpage=FALSE)
upViewport()