How to set width of y axis labels in ggplot2

Question

I collected the histograms in ggplot2 and used ImageMagick to animate them into gifs. The idea is that on all graphs it is assumed that the scale along the x axis will be the same, but this is not entirely true because the y axis is shifted around due to the different widths of the marks. How can I snap a graph so that all graphs have exactly the same axis position?

Here is my ggplot code if it helps:

hist.fn<-function(tier,ddf){
    df<-ddf[ddf$tier==tier,]
    l<-match(tier,levels(df$tier))
    hist.png<-ggplot(df,aes(df$"Premium Adult Individual Age 40" ))+
    geom_histogram()+   
    labs(title=paste0(tier," premiums in federal exchanges"),
            x ="Premium", y = "Frequency")+
    coord_cartesian(xlim=c(0, 1500))+
        theme_bw()+
        theme(text = element_text(size=14), plot.title = element_text(face="bold"),axis.title.x =element_text(face="bold"),axis.title.y =element_text(face="bold"))
    file=paste0(l,"hist.jpg")

    ggsave(filename=file, plot=hist.png, width=13, height=8, dpi=50)
    return(hist.png)
}
data.df$tier%>% levels %>% lapply(FUN=hist.fn,ddf=data.df) ->histograms.of.tiers    

system("magick -delay 75 *hist.jpg hist.gif")

Answer 1

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library(ggplot2)
library(gridExtra)
library(stringr)

# Generate plots 
# For each Species in iris dataset - generate a histogram of the Petal length
plots = lapply(levels(iris$Species), 
               function(spec){
                 ggplot(iris[iris$Species == spec, ], aes(Petal.Length)) + 
                   geom_histogram() + 
                   ggtitle(spec)
               })

# Show plots side by side 
grid.arrange(grobs = plots, nrow = 1, ncol = 3, top = "Base\n\n")

.
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# Solution 1 (recommended) - Set the same y-axis range for all the plots 
alignLimits = function(plotsList){
  # Extract limits of y-axis for each plot
  y.limits = sapply(plotsList, function(.){layer_scales(.)$y$range$range})
  y.min = min(y.limits[1,]) # Minimum of all the ranges
  y.max = max(y.limits[2,]) # Maximum of all the ranges 

  # Apply new limits for each plot
  return(lapply(plotsList, 
                function(.){. + coord_cartesian(ylim=c(y.min, y.max))}))
}

# Align limits of original plots and display
plots.limits = alignLimits(plots)
grid.arrange(grobs = plots.limits, nrow = 1, ncol = 3, top = "Aligned limits\n\n")

.

---

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# Use whitespaces to pad 
alignLables = function(plotsList){
  # Extract labels of y-axis
  # Note: Don't use the as.character on the maximum limit, 
  #       as decimal places in labels may increase the character count 
  y.labels = lapply(plotsList, function(.){ggplot_build(.)$layout$panel_ranges[[1]]$y.labels}) 

  # Calculate the maximum number of characters for each plot labels
  maxChars = sapply(y.labels, function(.){max(nchar(.))})

  # Define a function that would space-pad the labels and apply
  format.labels = function(label){str_pad(label, max(maxChars), pad = " ")}
  return(lapply(plotsList, function(.){return(. + scale_y_continuous(labels = format.labels))}))
}

# Align labels of original plots and display
plots.labels = alignLables(plots)
grid.arrange(grobs = plots.labels, nrow = 1, ncol = 3, top = "Aligned labels\n\n")

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Answer 2

gtable ,

library(ggplot2)
library(grid)
library(gridExtra)

plot_random <- function(){
  ggplot() +
    labs(y=paste(letters[sample(1:24, sample(1:3))], collapse = "\n"))
}

pl <- replicate(3, plot_random(), simplify = FALSE)
gl <- lapply(pl, ggplotGrob)
wl <- lapply(gl, function(g) g$widths[2])
wmax <- do.call(unit.pmax, wl)
gl <- lapply(gl, function(g) {g$widths[2] <- wmax; g})

grid.arrange(arrangeGrob(grobs = pl, top = "Normal case"),
             arrangeGrob(grobs = gl, top = "Standardised left"))