plot split character vector in consistent location - r

Question

Alright I decided to waste the evening making a hangman game in R. Got everything looking pretty good except an unknown number of letters that get plotted as seen here:
a
b
f
d
g
Here's an example/attempt using text and mtext:
FUN <- function(n) {
plot.new()
mtext("wrong", side = 3, cex=1.5, adj = 0, padj = 1, col = "red")
wrong <- letters[1:n]
text(0, .8, paste(wrong, collapse = "\n"), offset=.3, cex=1.5)
}
FUN(5)
FUN(10)
FUN2 <- function(n) {
plot.new()
mtext("wrong", side = 3, cex=1.5, adj = 0, padj = 1, col = "red")
wrong <- letters[1:n]
mtext(paste(wrong, collapse = "\n"), side = 3, cex=1.5,
adj = 0, padj = 2.5)
}
FUN2(5)
FUN2(10)
How can I make it so the a in both FUN(5) and FUN(10) plots in the same location?

Answer 1

First - way to go! R Games! You should totally make a package out of it so I can play ;)
For text you can use the adj argument, if you set it to 1. Then the (x,y) coordinates provided to text refer to the top-left corner of the rectangle that contains the text.
adj: one or two values in [0, 1] which specify the x (and
optionally y) adjustment of the labels. On most devices
values outside that interval will also work.
FUN <- function(n) {
plot.new()
mtext("better?", side = 3, cex=1.5, adj = 0, padj = 1, col = "red")
wrong <- letters[1:n]
text(0, .8, paste(wrong, collapse = "\n"), offset=.3, cex=1.5, adj=c(0,1))
}
Note adj=c(0,1), 0 being x alignment and 1 being y alignment (the documentation doesn't really make this clear but since it's a value in [0,1] I assume it to be an adjustment of position as a fraction of the label length in that dimension).
Similarly for mtext you need to use padj=1, being top alignment according to the documentation (since your text direction is left to right). The adj argument is the left-right alignment.
FUN2 <- function(n) {
plot.new()
mtext("better?", side = 3, cex=1.5, adj = 0, padj = 1, col = "red")
wrong <- letters[1:n]
mtext(paste(wrong, collapse = "\n"), side = 3, cex=1.5,
adj = 0, padj = 1) # adj=1 means text on right side instead of left.
}
(Are you going to do humorous stick man figures?? This sounds so fun :D)