Drawing graphs
plot.common.Rd
The common bits of the three plotting functions
plot.igraph
, tkplot
and rglplot
are discussed in
this manual page
Details
There are currently three different functions in the igraph package which can draw graph in various ways:
plot.igraph
does simple non-interactive 2D plotting to R devices.
Actually it is an implementation of the plot
generic function,
so you can write plot(graph)
instead of
plot.igraph(graph)
. As it used the standard R devices it
supports every output format for which R has an output device. The
list is quite impressing: PostScript, PDF files, XFig files, SVG
files, JPG, PNG and of course you can plot to the screen as well using
the default devices, or the good-looking anti-aliased Cairo device.
See plot.igraph
for some more information.
tkplot
does interactive 2D plotting using the tcltk
package. It can only handle graphs of moderate size, a thousand
vertices is probably already too many. Some parameters of the plotted
graph can be changed interactively after issuing the tkplot
command: the position, color and size of the vertices and the color
and width of the edges. See tkplot
for details.
rglplot
is an experimental function to draw graphs in 3D
using OpenGL. See rglplot
for some more information.
Please also check the examples below.
How to specify graphical parameters
There are three ways to give values to the parameters described below, in section 'Parameters'. We give these three ways here in the order of their precedence.
The first method is to supply named arguments to the plotting commands:
plot.igraph
, tkplot
or
rglplot
. Parameters for vertices start with prefix
‘vertex.
’, parameters for edges have prefix
‘edge.
’, and global parameters have no prefix. Eg. the
color of the vertices can be given via argument vertex.color
,
whereas edge.color
sets the color of the edges. layout
gives the layout of the graphs.
The second way is to assign vertex, edge and graph attributes to the
graph. These attributes have no prefix, ie. the color of the vertices
is taken from the color
vertex attribute and the color of the
edges from the color
edge attribute. The layout of the graph is
given by the layout
graph attribute. (Always assuming that the
corresponding command argument is not present.) Setting vertex and
edge attributes are handy if you want to assign a given ‘look’
to a graph, attributes are saved with the graph is you save it with
save
or in GraphML format with
write_graph
, so the graph will have the same look after
loading it again.
If a parameter is not given in the command line, and the corresponding
vertex/edge/graph attribute is also missing then the general igraph
parameters handled by igraph_options
are also
checked. Vertex parameters have prefix ‘vertex.
’, edge
parameters are prefixed with ‘edge.
’, general parameters
like layout
are prefixed with ‘plot
’.
These parameters are useful if you want
all or most of your graphs to have the same look, vertex size, vertex
color, etc. Then you don't need to set these at every plotting, and
you also don't need to assign vertex/edge attributes to every graph.
If the value of a parameter is not specified by any of the three ways described here, its default valued is used, as given in the source code.
Different parameters can have different type, eg. vertex colors can be given as a character vector with color names, or as an integer vector with the color numbers from the current palette. Different types are valid for different parameters, this is discussed in detail in the next section. It is however always true that the parameter can always be a function object in which it will be called with the graph as its single argument to get the “proper” value of the parameter. (If the function returns another function object that will not be called again...)
The list of parameters
Vertex parameters first, note that the ‘vertex.
’ prefix
needs to be added if they are used as an argument or when setting via
igraph_options
. The value of the parameter may be scalar
valid for every vertex or a vector with a separate value for each
vertex. (Shorter vectors are recycled.)
- size
The size of the vertex, a numeric scalar or vector, in the latter case each vertex sizes may differ. This vertex sizes are scaled in order have about the same size of vertices for a given value for all three plotting commands. It does not need to be an integer number.
The default value is 15. This is big enough to place short labels on vertices.
- size2
The “other” size of the vertex, for some vertex shapes. For the various rectangle shapes this gives the height of the vertices, whereas
size
gives the width. It is ignored by shapes for which the size can be specified with a single number.The default is 15.
- color
The fill color of the vertex. If it is numeric then the current palette is used, see
palette
. If it is a character vector then it may either contain integer values, named colors or RGB specified colors with three or four bytes. All strings starting with ‘#
’ are assumed to be RGB color specifications. It is possible to mix named color and RGB colors. Note thattkplot
ignores the fourth byte (alpha channel) in the RGB color specification.For
plot.igraph
and integer values, the default igraph palette is used (see the ‘palette’ parameter below. Note that this is different from the R palette.If you don't want (some) vertices to have any color, supply
NA
as the color name.The default value is “
SkyBlue2
”.- frame.color
The color of the frame of the vertices, the same formats are allowed as for the fill color.
If you don't want vertices to have a frame, supply
NA
as the color name.By default it is “black”.
- frame.width
The width of the frame of the vertices.
The default value is 1.
- shape
The shape of the vertex, currently “
circle
”, “square
”, “csquare
”, “rectangle
”, “crectangle
”, “vrectangle
”, “pie
” (see vertex.shape.pie), ‘sphere
’, and “none
” are supported, and only by theplot.igraph
command. “none
” does not draw the vertices at all, although vertex label are plotted (if given). Seeshapes
for details about vertex shapes andvertex.shape.pie
for using pie charts as vertices.The “
sphere
” vertex shape plots vertices as 3D ray-traced spheres, in the given color and size. This produces a raster image and it is only supported with some graphics devices. On some devices raster transparency is not supported and the spheres do not have a transparent background. Seedev.capabilities
and the ‘rasterImage
’ capability to check that your device is supported.By default vertices are drawn as circles.
- label
The vertex labels. They will be converted to character. Specify
NA
to omit vertex labels.The default vertex labels are the vertex ids.
- label.family
The font family to be used for vertex labels. As different plotting commands can used different fonts, they interpret this parameter different ways. The basic notation is, however, understood by both
plot.igraph
andtkplot
.rglplot
does not support fonts at all right now, it ignores this parameter completely.For
plot.igraph
this parameter is simply passed totext
as argumentfamily
.For
tkplot
some conversion is performed. If this parameter is the name of an exixting Tk font, then that font is used and thelabel.font
andlabel.cex
parameters are ignored complerely. If it is one of the base families (serif, sans, mono) then Times, Helvetica or Courier fonts are used, there are guaranteed to exist on all systems. For the ‘symbol’ base family we used the symbol font is available, otherwise the first font which has ‘symbol’ in its name. If the parameter is not a name of the base families and it is also not a named Tk font then we pass it totkfont.create
and hope the user knows what she is doing. Thelabel.font
andlabel.cex
parameters are also passed totkfont.create
in this case.The default value is ‘serif’.
- label.font
The font within the font family to use for the vertex labels. It is interpreted the same way as the the
font
graphical parameter: 1 is plain text, 2 is bold face, 3 is italic, 4 is bold and italic and 5 specifies the symbol font.For
plot.igraph
this parameter is simply passed totext
.For
tkplot
, if thelabel.family
parameter is not the name of a Tk font then this parameter is used to set whether the newly created font should be italic and/or boldface. Otherwise it is ignored.For
rglplot
it is ignored.The default value is 1.
- label.cex
The font size for vertex labels. It is interpreted as a multiplication factor of some device-dependent base font size.
For
plot.igraph
it is simply passed totext
as argumentcex
.For
tkplot
it is multiplied by 12 and then used as thesize
argument fortkfont.create
. The base font is thus 12 for tkplot.For
rglplot
it is ignored.The default value is 1.
- label.dist
The distance of the label from the center of the vertex. If it is 0 then the label is centered on the vertex. If it is 1 then the label is displayed beside the vertex.
The default value is 0.
- label.degree
It defines the position of the vertex labels, relative to the center of the vertices. It is interpreted as an angle in radian, zero means ‘to the right’, and ‘
pi
’ means to the left, up is-pi/2
and down ispi/2
.The default value is
-pi/4
.- label.color
The color of the labels, see the
color
vertex parameter discussed earlier for the possible values.The default value is
black
.
Edge parameters require to add the ‘edge.
’ prefix when
used as arguments or set by igraph_options
. The edge
parameters:
- color
The color of the edges, see the
color
vertex parameter for the possible values.By default this parameter is
darkgrey
.- width
The width of the edges.
The default value is 1.
- arrow.size
The size of the arrows. Currently this is a constant, so it is the same for every edge. If a vector is submitted then only the first element is used, ie. if this is taken from an edge attribute then only the attribute of the first edge is used for all arrows. This will likely change in the future.
The default value is 1.
- arrow.width
The width of the arrows. Currently this is a constant, so it is the same for every edge. If a vector is submitted then only the first element is used, ie. if this is taken from an edge attribute then only the attribute of the first edge is used for all arrows. This will likely change in the future.
This argument is currently only used by
plot.igraph
.The default value is 1, which gives the same width as before this option appeared in igraph.
- lty
The line type for the edges. Almost the same format is accepted as for the standard graphics
par
, 0 and “blank” mean no edges, 1 and “solid” are for solid lines, the other possible values are: 2 (“dashed”), 3 (“dotted”), 4 (“dotdash”), 5 (“longdash”), 6 (“twodash”).tkplot
also accepts standard Tk line type strings, it does not however support “blank” lines, instead of type ‘0’ type ‘1’, ie. solid lines will be drawn.This argument is ignored for
rglplot
.The default value is type 1, a solid line.
- label
The edge labels. They will be converted to character. Specify
NA
to omit edge labels.Edge labels are omitted by default.
- label.family
Font family of the edge labels. See the vertex parameter with the same name for the details.
- label.font
The font for the edge labels. See the corresponding vertex parameter discussed earlier for details.
- label.cex
The font size for the edge labels, see the corresponding vertex parameter for details.
- label.color
The color of the edge labels, see the
color
vertex parameters on how to specify colors.- label.x
The horizontal coordinates of the edge labels might be given here, explicitly. The
NA
elements will be replaced by automatically calculated coordinates. IfNULL
, then all edge horizontal coordinates are calculated automatically. This parameter is only supported byplot.igraph
.- label.y
The same as
label.x
, but for vertical coordinates.- curved
Specifies whether to draw curved edges, or not. This can be a logical or a numeric vector or scalar.
First the vector is replicated to have the same length as the number of edges in the graph. Then it is interpreted for each edge separately. A numeric value specifies the curvature of the edge; zero curvature means straight edges, negative values means the edge bends clockwise, positive values the opposite.
TRUE
means curvature 0.5,FALSE
means curvature zero.By default the vector specifying the curvatire is calculated via a call to the
curve_multiple
function. This function makes sure that multiple edges are curved and are all visible. This parameter is ignored for loop edges.The default value is
FALSE
.This parameter is currently ignored by
rglplot
.- arrow.mode
This parameter can be used to specify for which edges should arrows be drawn. If this parameter is given by the user (in either of the three ways) then it specifies which edges will have forward, backward arrows, or both, or no arrows at all. As usual, this parameter can be a vector or a scalar value. It can be an integer or character type. If it is integer then 0 means no arrows, 1 means backward arrows, 2 is for forward arrows and 3 for both. If it is a character vector then “<” and “<-” specify backward, “>” and “->” forward arrows and “<>” and “<->” stands for both arrows. All other values mean no arrows, perhaps you should use “-” or “--” to specify no arrows.
Hint: this parameter can be used as a ‘cheap’ solution for drawing “mixed” graphs: graphs in which some edges are directed some are not. If you want do this, then please create a directed graph, because as of version 0.4 the vertex pairs in the edge lists can be swapped in undirected graphs.
By default, no arrows will be drawn for undirected graphs, and for directed graphs, an arrow will be drawn for each edge, according to its direction. This is not very surprising, it is the expected behavior.
- loop.angle
Gives the angle in radian for plotting loop edges. See the
label.dist
vertex parameter to see how this is interpreted.The default value is 0.
- loop.angle2
Gives the second angle in radian for plotting loop edges. This is only used in 3D,
loop.angle
is enough in 2D.The default value is 0.
Other parameters:
- layout
Either a function or a numeric matrix. It specifies how the vertices will be placed on the plot.
If it is a numeric matrix, then the matrix has to have one line for each vertex, specifying its coordinates. The matrix should have at least two columns, for the
x
andy
coordinates, and it can also have third column, this will be thez
coordinate for 3D plots and it is ignored for 2D plots.If a two column matrix is given for the 3D plotting function
rglplot
then the third column is assumed to be 1 for each vertex.If
layout
is a function, this function will be called with thegraph
as the single parameter to determine the actual coordinates. The function should return a matrix with two or three columns. For the 2D plots the third column is ignored.The default value is
layout_nicely
, a smart function that chooses a layouter based on the graph.- margin
The amount of empty space below, over, at the left and right of the plot, it is a numeric vector of length four. Usually values between 0 and 0.5 are meaningful, but negative values are also possible, that will make the plot zoom in to a part of the graph. If it is shorter than four then it is recycled.
rglplot
does not support this parameter, as it can zoom in and out the graph in a more flexible way.Its default value is 0.
- palette
The color palette to use for vertex color. The default is
categorical_pal
, which is a color-blind friendly categorical palette. See its manual page for details and other palettes. This parameters is only supported byplot
, and not bytkplot
andrglplot
.- rescale
Logical constant, whether to rescale the coordinates to the [-1,1]x[-1,1](x[-1,1]) interval. This parameter is not implemented for
tkplot
.Defaults to
TRUE
, the layout will be rescaled.- asp
A numeric constant, it gives the
asp
parameter forplot
, the aspect ratio. Supply 0 here if you don't want to give an aspect ratio. It is ignored bytkplot
andrglplot
.Defaults to 1.
- frame
Boolean, whether to plot a frame around the graph. It is ignored by
tkplot
andrglplot
.Defaults to
FALSE
.- main
Overall title for the main plot. The default is empty if the
annotate.plot
igraph option isFALSE
, and the graph'sname
attribute otherwise. See the same argument of the baseplot
function. Only supported byplot
.- sub
Subtitle of the main plot, the default is empty. Only supported by
plot
.- xlab
Title for the x axis, the default is empty if the
annotate.plot
igraph option isFALSE
, and the number of vertices and edges, if it isTRUE
. Only supported byplot
.- ylab
Title for the y axis, the default is empty. Only supported by
plot
.
Author
Gabor Csardi csardi.gabor@gmail.com
Examples
if (FALSE) {
# plotting a simple ring graph, all default parameters, except the layout
g <- make_ring(10)
g$layout <- layout_in_circle
plot(g)
tkplot(g)
rglplot(g)
# plotting a random graph, set the parameters in the command arguments
g <- barabasi.game(100)
plot(g, layout=layout_with_fr, vertex.size=4,
vertex.label.dist=0.5, vertex.color="red", edge.arrow.size=0.5)
# plot a random graph, different color for each component
g <- sample_gnp(100, 1/100)
comps <- components(g)$membership
colbar <- rainbow(max(comps)+1)
V(g)$color <- colbar[comps+1]
plot(g, layout=layout_with_fr, vertex.size=5, vertex.label=NA)
# plot communities in a graph
g <- make_full_graph(5) %du% make_full_graph(5) %du% make_full_graph(5)
g <- add_edges(g, c(1,6, 1,11, 6,11))
com <- cluster_spinglass(g, spins=5)
V(g)$color <- com$membership+1
g <- set_graph_attr(g, "layout", layout_with_kk(g))
plot(g, vertex.label.dist=1.5)
# draw a bunch of trees, fix layout
igraph_options(plot.layout=layout_as_tree)
plot(make_tree(20, 2))
plot(make_tree(50, 3), vertex.size=3, vertex.label=NA)
tkplot(make_tree(50, 2, mode="undirected"), vertex.size=10,
vertex.color="green")
}