Reassembling misc packages

[teunbrand]

It seems to me that extension packages generally come in a limited amount of genres. We have:

• The one-trick ponies: packages that are designed to do one specific task (see ggbump, geofacet, ggrepel, ggbeeswarm)
• The domain packages that make a genre of visualisation easier (see ggraph, ggdist, ggsurvfit)
• Miscellaneous packages (see ggforce, ggh4x, lemon, ggpp)

I'm wondering whether it would be good in terms of ggplot2 ecosystem to break up the wild misc packages and repurpose their content into domain-like packages. For example, I can see ggh4x::facet_nested(), ggforce::facet_zoom() nucleating a facet package, but also a position package, or a stats package etc. Maybe stats is a little bit too unconfined and just yields another misc package 😅

I'd see these packages as sort of co-authored, so for developers the benefit is that the burden of maintaining the package can be shared among others.

The benefit for users is that they don't have to search 5 misc packages for a particular functionality.

[yjunechoe]

I like this idea! From a practical standpoint, I agree that it'd probably only make sense for a limited number of extension points like Facets and Positions (but not Stats, for reasons you state). I think it also helps that Facets and Positions are often written in ways such that they don't have external dependencies, so should be easier to stick a bunch of them into a single package.

I can see a {GGally}-style of mega-package in terms of the structure and ordinance. Another thing that'd be cool is if we had a {legendry}-esque situation for everything, where someone does the hard part of solving the abstraction problem of what can be shared and standardized among the different extensions. Ex: {legendry}'s "sub-grammar" for guides gives me independent motivation for wanting to build on top of that and submit a PR for a new Guide there if I ever write one (vs. trying to make my own package for it).

[teunbrand]

I think stat_manual() and your work with boilerplate functions will be a big help towards this indeed!

In addition I hope I can abolish the need for all these scale_colour_palettename() functions! Palette choices can now be resolved from theme settings :D

[EvaMaeRey]

I bet a contributed themes package would work well to start exploring, and there might be a lot of momentum with the new theming mechanisms coming down the pipe. There also might be less variation in how to construct a successful theme (though maybe this is naive to think), compared to layer construction for example (different waterfall plot constructions come to mind w/ Stat v. position waterfall mechanisms - recently I'm wondering if a variant on stat ECDF is the 'budget' path to waterfalls). An additional approach to new theming could be package templates (repos), so packaging burden is lower for folks wanting to write a separate package.

I think coordinating packages might need sub-badges. Like some parts of it is experimental and some is stable? An even more experimental space might be submitting extension work as recipe to a cookbook, for newer less-time-tested ideas. 🙃

The paletteer project comes to mind given its unification ambition and theme discussion!

[EvaMaeRey]

Some of @yjunechoe's layer discussion reminds me of this talk - https://evamaerey.github.io/mytidytuesday/2024-10-29-asa-cowy-fall-2024/asa-cowy-fall-2024#1 would be nice to talk through before the chapter reschedule. a statexpress::qlayer and ::qstat approach to writing a lot of layers for longerform graphical poems! 📊

[teunbrand]

I think coordinating packages might need sub-badges.

Yeah I think {lifecycle} encourages badges per function if there is such a level of granularity so that would be available.
In principle I like the idea of a cookbook, I just think it'd be hard to get people to contribute.

[EvaMaeRey]

That's right. I haven't used these myself, but have seen them. My knowing this more subconsciously - but not yet in terms of how-to, speaks the to the probable value of a more managed extension space, w/ packaging concerns more consolidated! 🚀🎈