Feature request: Could scales::number etc have a style_negative option of "none"?

[davidhodge931]

"none" is useful option for population pyramids, where you hack the data by multiplying the Female population

This should also flow into all of the label_*() functions.

So the argument would look like...

number(
  ...,
  style_negative = c("hyphen", "minus", "parens", "none"),

and the help would have an extra bullet...

• "none" removes any negative styling.

Could be something for Tidy Dev Day?

[davidsirl]

My experience is that this is possible with a slightly different approach to that suggested:

scale_x_continuous(breaks = pop_breaks, labels = abs(pop_breaks)),

where pop_breaks is organised beforehand as values_plotted |> abs() |> max() and then using base::pretty() to make the breakpoints nice round numbers.

(https://www.njtierney.com/post/2022/08/09/ggplot-pyramid/ was my source for that)

One can "tidy up" such labels further by using comma() but (i) comma() is superseded and (ii) I do not see how to do the same sort of thing with the superseding function label_comma().

(Hope that's constructive - first time issue-commenter :) )

[teunbrand]

I'm sorry David but I genuinely think this is not a good idea, but I get why it might be useful.
Overall, omitting a minus indication is misleading and we want to make it harder to put up misleading labels, not easier.
I get this then requires some extra effort to label pyramid plots, but this is a specialised plot and the creator should just take some care to abs() their values before labelling.

[davidhodge931]

Cool, thanks @teunbrand

[davidsirl]

I'm not sure I agree @teunbrand. Any plot can easily be made misleading and, like most plot options, this sort of functionality would aid informative labelling in some situations too. But if that's the decision then fair enough and thank you for explaining it and for linking to something that achieves the same thing.