Display a Gantt chart

Displays a Gantt chart with priority coloring

Usage

gantt.chart(x=NULL,format="%Y/%m/%d",xlim=NULL,taskcolors=NULL,
  priority.legend=FALSE,vgridpos=NULL,vgridlab=NULL,
  vgrid.format="%Y/%m/%d",
  half.height=0.25,hgrid=FALSE,main="",xlab="",cylindrical=FALSE,
  label.cex=1,border.col=NA,priority.label="Priorities",
  priority.extremes=c("High","Low"),time.axis=3)

Arguments

x: a list of task labels, start/end times and task priorities as returned by get.gantt.info. If this is not present, get.gantt.info will be called.
format: the format to be used in entering dates/times (see strptime).
xlim: the horizontal limits of the plot (see Details).
taskcolors: a vector of colors used to illustrate task priority.
priority.legend: Whether to display a priority color legend.
vgridpos: optional positions of the vertical grid lines.
vgridlab: optional labels for the vertical grid lines.
vgrid.format: format for the vertical grid labels.
half.height: the proportion of the spacing between task bars that will be filled by the bar on each side - 0.5 will leave no space.
hgrid: logical - whether to display grid lines between the bars.
main: the title of the plot - note that this is actually displayed using mtext.
xlab: horizontal axis label - usually suppressed.
cylindrical: Whether to give the bars a cylindrical appearance.
label.cex: Relative size for the task labels at the left side.
border.col: The color for an optional border for the bars (NA=none).
priority.label: Label for the priority color legend.
priority.extremes: Labels for each end of the priority color legend.
time.axis: Where to place the time axis labels.

Value

The list used to create the chart - see get.gantt.info for details. This can be saved and reused rather than manually entering the information each time the chart is displayed.

Details

Because the "time" axis is calculated using POSIXct values, the values passed as xlim must also be POSIXct. See the second plot in the examples.

If task priority colors are not wanted, set taskcolors to a single value to suppress the coloring. If this is not done, rainbow will be called to generate a different color for each task. If colors other than rainbow are wanted, remember to pass enough colors for one to the lowest (highest numerically) priority.

There can now be more than one time interval for each task. If there is, more than one bar will be displayed for each interval, which may not be a task at all, but rather intervals related to the labels. Colors can be specified for labels or intervals and if there are not as many colors as intervals, the first "number of unique labels" colors will be assigned to each unique label. This should make every bar for each label the same color, but be aware that the colors will be distributed in alphabetical order of the entity labels. If there are at least as many taskcolors as intervals, they will be assigned to intervals in the order of the taskcolors vector. The examples should make this clearer.

Since gantt.chart can be used to display things other than prioritized tasks, the labels for the priority legend can now be specified.

Author

Jim Lemon (original by Scott Waichler - features by Ulrike Gromping - added label colors by Nicolas Immelman)

Examples

 Ymd.format<-"%Y/%m/%d"
 gantt.info<-list(labels=
  c("First task","Second task","Third task","Fourth task","Fifth task"),
  starts=
  as.POSIXct(strptime(
  c("2004/01/01","2004/02/02","2004/03/03","2004/05/05","2004/09/09"),
  format=Ymd.format)),
  ends=
  as.POSIXct(strptime(
  c("2004/03/03","2004/05/05","2004/05/05","2004/08/08","2004/12/12"),
  format=Ymd.format)),
  priorities=c(1,2,3,4,5))
 vgridpos<-as.POSIXct(strptime(c("2004/01/01","2004/02/01","2004/03/01",
  "2004/04/01","2004/05/01","2004/06/01","2004/07/01","2004/08/01",
  "2004/09/01","2004/10/01","2004/11/01","2004/12/01"),format=Ymd.format))
 vgridlab<-
  c("Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug","Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec")
 gantt.chart(gantt.info,main="Calendar date Gantt chart (2004)",
  priority.legend=TRUE,vgridpos=vgridpos,vgridlab=vgridlab,hgrid=TRUE)

 # add a little extra space on the right side
 gantt.chart(gantt.info,main="Calendar date Gantt chart (2004)",
 priority.legend=TRUE,vgridpos=vgridpos,vgridlab=vgridlab,hgrid=TRUE,
 xlim=as.POSIXct(strptime(c("2004/01/01","2004/12/20"),
 format=Ymd.format)))

 # if both vgidpos and vgridlab are specified,
 # starts and ends don't have to be dates
 info2<-list(labels=c("Jim","Joe","Jim","John","John","Jake","Joe","Jed","Jake"),
  starts=c(8.1,8.7,13.0,9.1,11.6,9.0,13.6,9.3,14.2),
  ends=c(12.5,12.7,16.5,10.3,15.6,11.7,18.1,18.2,19.0))
 gantt.chart(info2,vgridlab=8:19,vgridpos=8:19,
  main="All bars the same color",taskcolors="lightgray")

 gantt.chart(info2,vgridlab=8:19,vgridpos=8:19,
  main="A color for each label",taskcolors=c(2,3,7,4,8))

 gantt.chart(info2,vgridlab=8:19,vgridpos=8:19,
  main="A color for each interval - with borders",
  taskcolors=c(2,3,7,4,8,5,3,6,"purple"),border.col="black")