Invalid custom axis title position for `type='barplot'`

[lbelzile]

The y-axis label displays on the x-axis instead. This does not depend on the beside argument.

set.seed(2025)
n <- 100L
x <- factor(sample(0:1, size = n, replace = TRUE))
y <- rpois(n, 5)
tinyplot::plt(~ y | x, type = "barplot", beside = TRUE, ylab = "mycaption")

^{Created on 2025-06-06 with reprex v2.1.1}

[lbelzile]

This is from lines 80--82 in file type_barplot

where the code states

   if (is.null(datapoints$y)) {
          xlab = ylab
          ylab = "Count"

[zeileis]

Good catch. I think this is just intended to be the default if the user does not specify any xlab and/or ylab. In that default case it is reasonable.

However, when the user wants to change xlab, they have to change ylab (as demonstrated by you). And they cannot change ylab at all.

At first, I thought that we should use

        if (is.null(datapoints$y)) {
          if (is.null(xlab)) xlab = ylab
          if (is.null(ylab)) ylab = "Count"

However, then the default does not work anymore because the default xlab and ylab are inserted by tinyplot.default before (https://github.com/grantmcdermott/tinyplot/blob/main/R/tinyplot.R#L755-L774) and hence they are not NULL here.

Grant @grantmcdermott, do you know what the "canonical" fix would be here?

[grantmcdermott]

Thanks for the report @lbelzile. I took a quick look at this and it turns out to be a trickier solve than I first guessed. I'm slammed at work ATM, so it will have to wait a bit until I have time. But we'll get to it.

[grantmcdermott]

Fixed in the dev version now. Should be coming to CRAN shortly too...

set.seed(2025)
n = 100L
x = factor(sample(0:1, size = n, replace = TRUE))
y = rpois(n, 5)
tinyplot::plt(~ y | x, type = "barplot", beside = TRUE, ylab = "mycaption")

^{Created on 2025-11-24 with reprex v2.1.1}