Given vectors specifying the start (`x`) and end (`xend`) of line segments assign them to different categories (`y`) so that they do not overlap.
layout_segments(x, xend, gap = 0, random = FALSE, k = 0)
| x | A vector of the start locations of each segment. |
|---|---|
| xend | A vector of the end locations of each segment. |
| gap | Extra space required between non-overlapping segments. |
| random | Whether to layout segments deterministically or randomly. See 'Details`.` |
| k | If `random = TRUE` parameter to use for the amount of randomness. See 'Details'. |
A vector of positive integer `y` locations to use for each segment so that they do not overlap.
The vectors are sorted in ascending order by `x` and `xend`. The function makes two passes through the data. First, to determine the number of categories in `y`, it scans through all unique values of `x` and `xend` to find the maximum number of overlapping segments at a point in time.
Second, it processes each segment sequentially, assigning each segment a `y` that will not overlap with previous segments. There are two methods which can be used to choose this `y`.
1. **minimum**: If `random = FALSE`, then the minimum `y` such that the segment will not overlap previous segments. 1. **random**: If `random = TRUE`, then `y` is randomly sampled from all among all the choices in which the segment would not overlap. The samples are weighted by `(1 / y) ^ k`, where `k` is a parameter that determines how much lower values of `y` are weighted. The default value of `k = 0` weights all values equally, and `k = Inf` is equivalent to the method of selecting the minimum `y` (as in `random = TRUE`).