geom_dotplot() with continuous x variable and a categorical y variable.

[retodomax]

I found a problem with geom_dotplot() if I provide a continuous x variable and a categorical y variable.

I expected a plot as the following but with reversed x and y axis.

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(data = iris) +
  geom_dotplot(aes(y = Sepal.Length, x = Species), binaxis = "y")

Instead, I got the following

ggplot(data = iris) +
  geom_dotplot(aes(x = Sepal.Length, y = Species), binaxis = "x")

The dots start at the bottom instead of at the corresponding species level (y-axis).

^{Created on 2023-10-09 with reprex v2.0.2}

[teunbrand]

Thanks for the report! The culprit seems to be the following line:

ggplot2/R/geom-dotplot.R

Line 249 in 8835709

data$y <- 0

Which was originally written for compatibility with coord_flip() in 0de20da.

coord_flip() has been deprecated in favour of swapping x/y aesthetics but that doesn't seem to work here. I'm a bit surprised that geom_dotplot() doesn't have the bidirectionality mechanism introduced in ggplot2 3.3.0.

@thomasp85 do you happen to remember why geom_dotplot() was exempted from #3506?