Automatic adjustment of margins in horizontal bar chart
I think your first idea is probably the most appropriate. Something like this seems to work okay and requires not much stuffing about.
ylabels <- c( "1oooooooooooo", "2", "3", "4")test <- matrix(c(55,65,30, 40,70,55,75,6,49,45,34,20), nrow =3 , ncol=4, byrow=TRUE, dimnames = list(c("Subgroup 1", "Subgroup 2", "Subgroup 3"), ylabels))# adjust to the maximum of either the default # or a figure based on the maximum lengthpar(mar=c(5.1, max(4.1,max(nchar(ylabels))/1.8) ,4.1 ,2.1))barplot(test, las=2, beside = TRUE, legend=T, horiz=T)After inspecting dotchart, a more generalisable solution may also be to use:
linch <- max(strwidth(ylabels, "inch")+0.4, na.rm = TRUE)par(mai=c(1.02,linch,0.82,0.42))