Read this first

{ggrough} is in a dormant state. Please be aware that this project doesn't work with recent releases of {ggplot2} (although the needed changes might not be big and some people have tried to fix them). If you came here, there are other more recent projects that you might find interesting (e.g. {roughnet}, {roughsf}, r-sketchy and maybe more). I set the repo in 'read-only' (no issues) mode for now, but feel free to fork). Hopefully, there will be a time in the future when I can dedicate more time to work on it: there have been many improvements to {patchwork} that would solve some of the existing shortcomings and I still believe that a nice way to create sketchy visualisations would be a neat addition to the {ggplot2} ecosystem.

What is ggrough?

ggrough is an R package that converts your ggplot2 plots to rough/sketchy charts, using the excellent javascript roughjs library.

library(ggplot2)
count(mtcars, carb) %>%
  ggplot(aes(carb, n)) +
  geom_col() + 
  labs(title="Number of cars by carburator count") + 
  theme_grey(base_size = 16) -> p 
p

library(ggrough)
options <- list(
  Background=list(roughness=8),
  GeomCol=list(fill_style="zigzag", angle_noise=0.5, fill_weight=2))
get_rough_chart(p, options)

How to install

install.packages("devtools") # if you have not installed "devtools" package
devtools::install_github("xvrdm/ggrough")

How to use

Call get_rough_chart(), using your ggplot2 chart as the first argument. See this page for more ggrough examples and all the available options to customize your output.

Word of caution

ggrough is a work in progress and still has big bugs. Contributions are welcome!

ggrough works “ok” with RStudio Viewer. However you need to redraw your chart everytime you change the size of the Viewer tab and the charts will redraw when you try to copy it via Export -> Save As Image. The latter can be annoying since some roughjs settings can add a lot of randomness.

ggrough doesn’t work well with Rmarkdown files yet. For example, it can only generate one chart per document. If you have multiple charts it overlays them on top of each other.

Under the hood

ggrough is an htmlwidget. It converts your ggplot2 chart to SVG using the package svglite then parse the different elements (<rect>, <path>, <circle>…) to create a chart in a HTML Canvas element¹ with roughjs.

An article explaining how ggrough works is in the making, to help potential contributors get started.

Thanks

This package is only possible thanks to the massive work of:

• Kent Russell — twitter:timelyportfolio and Bob Rudis — twitter:hrbrmstr for the enormous educational content they created or shared about htmlwidget and ggplot2.
• Preet Shihn — twitter:preetster and all the contributors of roughjs.
• Hadley Wickham — twitter:hadleywickham and all the contributors of ggplot2.
• Lionel Henry — twitter:_lionelhenry and all the contributors of svglite

---

1. roughjs can also render to SVG. This will be supported by ggrough in the future↩