Use default aesthetics from geom_point as defaults for goem_boxplot outliers

[nfdisco]

Currently, the default values for the outlier arguments to geom_boxplot, that control the shape, colour and size of outliers, cannot be changed with update_geom_defaults. It makes sense because technically these parameters are not aesthetics. On the other hand, if the user changes, say, the default shape of geom_point, the result will be that geom_point and geom_boxplot will produce points with different shapes, which probably is not desirable or entirely expected.

One solution is to use the default values from geom_point as defaults for the outlier arguments in geom_boxplot, so that

update_geom_defaults("point", list(shape = 1, colour='blue',size=4))

also affects the shape, colour and size of the outlier points produced by geom_boxplot. Find patch attached.

[nfdisco]

I don't seem to be able to attach files so I will just paste the diff output below.

--- R/geom-boxplot.r.old    2013-01-21 00:41:53.950280570 +0100
+++ R/geom-boxplot.r    2013-01-21 00:56:16.922267982 +0100
@@ -94,8 +94,12 @@
 #' b + geom_boxplot(aes(fill = X1), stat = "identity")
 #' }
 geom_boxplot <- function (mapping = NULL, data = NULL, stat = "boxplot", position = "dodge", 
-outlier.colour = "black", outlier.shape = 16, outlier.size = 2,
+outlier.colour = NULL, outlier.shape = NULL, outlier.size = NULL,
 notch = FALSE, notchwidth = .5, ...) {
+  outlier_defaults <- Geom$find('point')$default_aes()
+  outlier.colour <- outlier.colour %||% outlier_defaults$colour
+  outlier.shape <- outlier.shape %||% outlier_defaults$shape
+  outlier.size <- outlier.size %||% outlier_defaults$size
   GeomBoxplot$new(mapping = mapping, data = data, stat = stat, 
   position = position, outlier.colour = outlier.colour, outlier.shape = outlier.shape, 
   outlier.size = outlier.size, notch = notch, notchwidth = notchwidth, ...)

[hadley]

This sounds like a great feature, but unfortunately we don't currently have the development bandwidth to support it. If you'd like to submit a pull request that implements this feature, please follow the instructions in the development vignette.