svgedit allows creating figures with complex layout programmatically in R, by using an SVG file as a template.
You can install svgedit from CRAN with:
install.packages("svgedit")There are four main steps to use svgedit:
- Create an SVG template file using the Inkscape graphics editor
- Create your figure layout in the SVG file, including:
- Rectangles for ggplot2 plots and images (they will be replaced by your plots and images)
- Text elements containing the
{}placeholder for dynamic text (a single text box can contain multiple{}placeholders) - Any "static" elements you like (text, images, shapes...)
- Open Inkscape's "Layers and Objects" (Ctrl + Shift + L), and click on your placeholder elements to set their labels
- In R, use svgedit to replace the placeholders with your plots, images, and text
See the package vignette by running vignette("multi-panel-figure", package = "svgedit") for an example use.