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I'm using geom_segment to plot a timeline of activity. It's all on the same line, and since I want to present it together with other graphs, I'd much rather make the y axis much smaller. It seems that the size of the gray graph area in ggplot2 is always square though, whether I scale it larger or smaller. Is there a way to say that I want x=500 y=50 or something like that?

df2 <- structure(list(Activities = structure(c(2L, 1L, 2L, 1L, 2L, 3L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 5L, 4L, 3L, 2L, 2L), .Label = c("authoring", "hacking", "learning", "surfing", "tasks"), class = "factor"), Start = c(14895L, 15005L, 16066L, 16226L, 16387L, 16394L, 27030L,27532L, 27600L, 27687L, 28660L, 28713L, 29154L, 30264L, 30345L, 32245L), End = c(15005L, 16066L, 16226L, 16387L,16394L, 16509L, 27491L, 27591L, 27628L, 28450L, 28704L, 29109L, 30250L, 30345L, 31235L, 33794L)), .Names = c("Activities", "Start", "End"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -16L)) a <- 0:23

Here my plot:

ggplot(df2, aes(colour=Activities)) + geom_segment(aes(x=Start, xend=End, y=0, yend=0), size=10) + scale_x_continuous(breaks=a * 60 * 60, labels=a) + xlab("Time") + ylab("") + scale_y_continuous(breaks=NULL, limits=c(-.1, .1))

Sample timeline chart

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    The size of the plot is the size of your current graphics device. Change that, and your plot will automatically adjust. If you want to set the size while saving to disk, use ggsave() and set the plot size arguments. Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 10:01
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    @Andrie: Make that an answer? Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 10:42
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    @Andrie you can also just use coord_fixed to fix the ratio between the x and y axis, see my answer. I actually got this form an answer you have a some time back :). Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 10:57
  • @PaulHiemstra Yes, I agree but my interpretation of the question is different. Commented Mar 18, 2013 at 11:11

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To fix the ratio on the x and y-axis to some value (e.g. 1, or 0.2), you can use coord_fixed():

g + coord_fixed(ratio = 0.2)

where g is your original plot. You have to play around a bit to get what you need. In addition, like @Andrie said, you can also fix the canvas size, e.g. using ggsave:

print(g) ggsave("/tmp/plt.png", width = 16, height = 9, dpi = 120)

I'd try out both, or maybe combine them. See also this earlier post.

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Just so it's clear, here ratio is y/x. For reference - ggplot2.tidyverse.org/reference/coord_fixed.html

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