Changelog • ggsketch

ggsketch 1.5.0

Annotation toolkit (first piece), roughness-as-an-aesthetic, and a real solid fill.

geom_sketch_bracket() draws a hand-drawn significance / comparison bracket spanning xmin to xmax at height y, with short end tips and an optional handwriting label (e.g. a p-value or “n.s.”) centred above. The sketch counterpart of a ggsignif bracket, for marking pairwise comparisons on boxplots, bars, and violins.
roughness is now a mappable aesthetic on geom_sketch_point(). Map it to a variable (aes(roughness = z)) so each point wobbles more or less, or set a constant. A mapped variable is rescaled to a legible roughness band by the new scale_roughness_continuous() (default range c(0.01, 0.75)), applied automatically just like scale_size(); wrap values in I() to use them as raw roughness. Rolling the mappable treatment out to the other geoms is planned (see dev/FUTURE-TODO.md).

Bug fixes

fill_style = "solid" now actually paints the shape with its fill colour instead of leaving the interior empty. Previously “solid” drew the outline only, so the fill colour was computed and then never used and the shape stayed transparent (most visible on solid bars/columns). The fill follows the roughened boundary so the hand-drawn edge is kept. Shapes with no fill (fill = NA) stay outline-only as before.
geom_sketch_boxplot() now defaults to fill = NA, so the box stays outline-only (as it effectively was before solid fill started painting). Pass a fill for a solid box, or fill_style = "hachure" with a fill for a shaded one.
theme_sketch(base_family = ) now defaults to getOption("ggsketch.base_family", ""), so options(ggsketch.base_family = "auto") makes every sketch plot’s text (titles, axes, legend) use a handwriting font, not only the labels drawn by geom_sketch_text() / geom_sketch_bracket().

ggsketch 1.4.0

The frame can now be roughened too, plus a matching colour palette, a new fill style, and reproducible fonts.

Rough theme elements. element_sketch_line() and element_sketch_rect() render gridlines, panel borders, and axis ticks as roughened sketch grobs. theme_sketch(rough_frame = TRUE) turns them on so the frame matches the marks. Works on ggplot2 3.5 and 4.0 (S3 element_grob methods; sketch params stored as attributes that survive theme merging).
Sketch colour scales. scale_colour_sketch() / scale_fill_sketch() use a qualitative palette (sketch_palette()) chosen to suit the hand-drawn look; the *_sketch_c() variants give a continuous blue gradient.
New fill style "scribble" — one continuous winding stroke that overshoots the boundary, like scribbling to fill a shape. Available everywhere a fill_style is accepted.
Reproducible fonts. register_sketch_font() registers a handwriting font file (via systemfonts) so the result reproduces on any machine or CI runner without a system install; the font resolver now also finds registered fonts.

Bug fixes

geom_sketch_point() (and geom_sketch_circle() / geom_sketch_ellipse()) now draw each mark in its own colour when the colour/fill aesthetic varies within a single group — e.g. a continuous scale such as scale_colour_sketch_c(). Previously every mark took the first point’s colour, so a gradient looked flat.
The double-stroke outline now shares its vertices across passes, so it reads as one hand-drawn line gone over twice rather than two parallel lines. Previously each pass jittered the vertices independently and the strokes could drift apart on short or flat edges (most visible on outlines like violins).
geom_sketch_boxplot() draws the median with much less bowing so the thick median line reads as one firm line rather than a bowed lens.
The handwriting-font resolver (base_family = "auto", geom_sketch_text()) now handles variable fonts. A face such as Caveat that ships as a variable font cannot be drawn by name on ragg/svglite (the device falls back to the default), so the resolver pins a renderable instance automatically. This is why a handwriting face now shows up out of the box, with no manual register_sketch_font() call needed.

ggsketch 1.3.0

New geoms (Tier 3, first batch — 2-D density and text):

geom_sketch_contour() — hand-drawn contour lines of a surface (via stat_contour).
geom_sketch_density2d() / geom_sketch_density_2d() — 2-D kernel-density contour lines (via stat_density_2d).
geom_sketch_hex() — hexagonal binning heatmap (needs the optional hexbin package).
geom_sketch_text() and geom_sketch_label() — text in a handwriting font (the sketch of text is the font, not roughened glyphs). They now honour nudge_x/nudge_y like ggplot2::geom_text(), and the font resolver falls back to handwriting faces preinstalled on Windows/macOS (Segoe Print, Ink Free, Bradley Hand, Chalkboard, Comic Sans MS, …) so a sketchy face is found even when Caveat is not installed. Use a font-aware device (ragg, svglite, cairo) to render the handwriting font; the base GDI png() device may fall back to the default family.

Still to come in Tier 3: filled contour / 2-D density bands (*_filled, which need multi-ring hole-aware hachure) and geom_sketch_dotplot().

ggsketch 1.2.0

New geoms (Tier 2 coverage — more stats and connectors; reuse existing grobs, one new optional dependency):

geom_sketch_count() — points sized by overplot count (via stat_sum).
geom_sketch_function() — sketch a function curve (via stat_function).
geom_sketch_qq() and geom_sketch_qq_line() — quantile-quantile points and reference line.
geom_sketch_quantile() — quantile regression lines (needs the optional quantreg package).
geom_sketch_rug() — marginal ticks along the panel edges (sides).
geom_sketch_spoke() — segments from (x, y) by angle + radius.
geom_sketch_curve() — hand-drawn curved connector (quadratic Bezier).
geom_sketch_bin2d() / geom_sketch_bin_2d() — rectangular 2-D bin heatmap.

ggsketch 1.1.0

New geoms (Tier 1 coverage — all reuse the existing grobs and base ggplot2 stats; no new hard dependencies):

geom_sketch_histogram() and geom_sketch_freqpoly() — binned distributions (via stat_bin).
geom_sketch_jitter() — geom_sketch_point() with a jitter position.
geom_sketch_violin() — mirrored kernel density with hachure fill (via stat_ydensity).
Interval family: geom_sketch_linerange(), geom_sketch_pointrange(), geom_sketch_errorbar(), geom_sketch_crossbar().
Reference lines: geom_sketch_abline(), geom_sketch_hline(), geom_sketch_vline().

ggsketch 1.0.0

First public release. A grammar-native, pure-R implementation of the rough.js hand-drawn aesthetic for ggplot2 — no JavaScript, works on every graphics device.

Geoms

Lines & points: geom_sketch_line(), geom_sketch_path(), geom_sketch_point().
Bars & tiles: geom_sketch_col(), geom_sketch_bar(), geom_sketch_rect(), geom_sketch_tile().
Areas & curves: geom_sketch_polygon() (concave-safe fill), geom_sketch_ribbon(), geom_sketch_area(), geom_sketch_density(), geom_sketch_smooth().
Circular & composed: geom_sketch_circle(), geom_sketch_ellipse(), geom_sketch_segment(), geom_sketch_step(), geom_sketch_boxplot().
Helpers: annotate_sketch() and theme_sketch() (light + dark presets).

Fill styles

hachure, cross_hatch, zigzag, zigzag_line, dots, dashed, solid, via a full Active-Edge-Table scan-line filler that handles concave polygons.

Design

Three strict layers: pure geometry (Layer 1), grid grobs with makeContent() (Layer 2), ggproto geoms (Layer 3). Roughening happens in device-inch space.
Reproducible: every randomized routine draws from a seeded local RNG stream and never mutates the user’s global .Random.seed. Set options(ggsketch.seed=).
Sketchy legend keys for every geom.

Notes

Algorithms reimplemented in original R from published descriptions; no rough.js source is included (see inst/NOTICE). Independent of, and not affiliated with, rough.js or ggrough.

Development history (internal milestones)

0.0.1 — Layer 1 sketch core (roughen, ellipse, Bézier, hachure, fill styles).
0.1.0 — Layer 2 grobs + first geoms (line/path/point) + theme_sketch().
0.2.0 — Filled rectangular geoms (col/bar/rect/tile) + fill-style coverage.
0.3.0 — Polygons, areas, ribbons, density, smooth.
1.0.0 — Circular & composed geoms, annotations, theming, docs, release.