I spent the past couple hours trying to figure out why emojis are not being display properly on ggplot, but no luck.
Minimal example
Loading libraries + data
library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
# Specify alien monster emoji
my_emoji <- '\U0001f47e'
# Create base plot using iris data set
base_plot <-
iris %>%
ggplot(aes(x=Sepal.Length, y=Sepal.Width)) +
geom_point(size=.5)
Plotting
base_plot +
geom_text(x=5, y=4, label="Adding regular text works") +
geom_text(x=6, y=4, label=my_emoji)
Adding regular text works, but using unicode doesn’t (only rectangles are displayed).
# Setting 'dev="cairo_pdf"' also does not work
base_plot + geom_text(x=6, y=4, label=my_emoji)
Displaying the emoji: print vs cat
print(my_emoji)
## [1] "\U0001f47e"
cat(my_emoji)
## 👾
cat renders the emoji, but the emoji is not rendered in ggplot – why?
Unicode in the title
As per Stackoverflow: Comfortable way to use unicode characters in a ggplot graph, μ is displayed in the title, but 👾 is not – why?
base_plot + ggtitle(sprintf('5%sg', '\u03BC'))
base_plot + ggtitle(sprintf('5%sg', my_emoji))
SessionInfo
sessionInfo()
## R version 3.3.2 (2016-10-31)
## Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
## Running under: OS X El Capitan 10.11.3
##
## locale:
## [1] en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8/C/en_CA.UTF-8/en_CA.UTF-8
##
## attached base packages:
## [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
##
## other attached packages:
## [1] dplyr_0.5.0 ggplot2_2.2.1
##
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
## [1] Rcpp_0.12.10 knitr_1.15 magrittr_1.5 munsell_0.4.3
## [5] colorspace_1.3-1 R6_2.2.0 stringr_1.1.0 plyr_1.8.4
## [9] tools_3.3.2 grid_3.3.2 gtable_0.2.0 DBI_0.5-1
## [13] htmltools_0.3.5 yaml_2.1.14 lazyeval_0.2.0 rprojroot_1.1
## [17] digest_0.6.12 assertthat_0.1 tibble_1.3.0 evaluate_0.10
## [21] rmarkdown_1.3 labeling_0.3 stringi_1.1.2 scales_0.4.1
## [25] backports_1.0.4