Reading data

DESCRIPTION

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 Package: Ternary
-Version: 2.3.1
+Version: 2.3.1.9000
 Title: Create Ternary and Holdridge Plots
 Description: Plots ternary diagrams (simplex plots / Gibbs triangles) and
   Holdridge life zone plots <doi:10.1126/science.105.2727.367> using the

NEWS.md

@@ -1,3 +1,6 @@
+# Ternary v2.3.1.9000 (development)
+- Document reading data into R in new users vignette.
+
 # Ternary v2.3.1 (2024-02-06)
 - Improve support for `region` parameter.
 

R/dot-TrianglePlot.R

@@ -47,9 +47,10 @@
                           tip.font,
                           xlim, ylim, region,
                           ...) {
-  direction <- 1L + (pmatch(tolower(point), c("right", "down", "left", "up",
-                                              "east", "south", "west", "north",
-                                              2L, 3L, 4L, 1L)) %% 4L)
+  direction <- 1L + (pmatch(tolower(point[[1]]),
+                            c("right", "down", "left", "up",
+                              "east", "south", "west", "north",
+                              "2", "3", "4", "1")) %% 4L)
   if (is.na(direction)) {
     stop("`point` must be one of up, down, left or right")
   } else {

vignettes/new-users.Rmd

@@ -216,6 +216,45 @@ PlotTools::SpectrumLegend(
 )
 ```
 
+# Your own data
+
+The next step is to try plotting your own data.  There are many online
+tutorials for loading data in a variety of formats into R.
+Two of the most common cases are:
+
+- Reading data from an Excel file.  Here you can use:
+```r
+# On first use only, install thje 'readxl' package
+install.packages("readxl")
+
+# Load data into an object called `myData`
+myData <- readxl::read_excel("path_to/your_excel_file.xlsx")
+
+# View the loaded data
+View(myData)
+
+# View manual page for `read_excel` function, with details for advanced use
+?read_excel
+```
+
+- Reading data from a delimited file, such as a `.csv`:
+
+```r
+# Read data into an object called `myData`
+myData <- read.csv("path_to/your_data_file.csv")
+
+# View the loaded data
+View(myData)
+
+# For more flexibility - for instance for tab-separated data - see:
+?read.table
+
+# Read data from a tab-separated file with a header row
+myData <- read.table("path_to/your_data_file.txt", sep = "\t", header = TRUE)
+
+View(myData)
+```
+
 # Where next
 
 For more complicated examples of usage, see the accompanying vignettes: