Layouts: A Mechanism for Arranging Plots on a Page

An arbitrary arrangement of plots on a page can be achieved by specifying the location (left, bottom) and dimensions (width, height) of each individual plot. However, this sort of specification is unintuitive and, especially for simple arrangements, inconvenient and inefficient. This article describes a mechanism for specifying an arrangement of plots by constructing a matrix of plot names. The mechanism is intuitive, simple and, with the help of a few additional parameters, can produce quite sophisticated arrangements. The mechanism was developed as part of a prototype software package, but it does not rely heavily on any of the features of that package and it could be implemented in any statistical system.