Line Snake Plot (Experimental) — line

A continuous intensity line winding through a serpentine layout. Each band represents a time segment (e.g., a day); the line's vertical position within the band encodes a continuous value (e.g., foot traffic, CPU usage). The line smoothly curves through U-turn arcs between bands.

Usage

line_snake(
  data,
  band_height = 40,
  band_gap = 18,
  day_start = 0,
  day_end = 1440,
  plot_width = 500,
  line_color = "#e74c3c",
  line_width = 1.5,
  fill_color = NULL,
  fill_opacity = 0.3,
  band_color = "#2d2d3d",
  arc_color = "#1a1a2e",
  band_opacity = 0.9,
  arc_opacity = 0.85,
  show_grid = TRUE,
  shadow = TRUE,
  label_color = "#cccccc",
  label_size = 0.85,
  orientation = c("horizontal", "vertical"),
  start_from = c("left", "right"),
  flow = c("snake", "natural"),
  title = NULL,
  margin = c(top = 30, right = 10, bottom = 50, left = 80),
  background = "white"
)

Arguments

data

A data.frame with columns:

time: Numeric (minutes from midnight) or POSIXct timestamps.
value: Numeric intensity value.
day: (Optional) Day labels. Auto-detected from timestamps if absent.

Alternatively, a numeric vector (interpreted as evenly-spaced values for a single band).

band_height

Numeric (default 40).

band_gap

Numeric (default 18).

day_start

Numeric, minutes from midnight (default 0).

day_end

Numeric, minutes from midnight (default 1440).

plot_width

Numeric (default 500).

line_color

Character (default "#e74c3c").

line_width

Numeric (default 1.5).

fill_color

Optional fill color below the line (default NULL = no fill).

fill_opacity

Numeric 0-1 (default 0.3).

band_color

Character (default "#2d2d3d").

arc_color

Character (default "#1a1a2e").

band_opacity

Numeric (default 0.90).

arc_opacity

Numeric (default 0.85).

show_grid

Logical (default TRUE).

shadow

Logical (default TRUE).

label_color

Character (default "#cccccc").

label_size

Numeric (default 0.85).

orientation

Character, "horizontal" or "vertical" (default "horizontal").

start_from

Character, "left" or "right" (default "left").

flow

Character, "snake" (default) or "natural". "snake" uses alternating boustrophedon direction; "natural" reads all bands in the same direction.

title

Optional title.

margin

Named numeric vector.

background

Background color.

Value

Invisible snake_layout object.

Examples

set.seed(42)
hours <- seq(0, 1440, by = 10)
d <- data.frame(
  day = rep(c("Mon", "Tue", "Wed"), each = length(hours)),
  time = rep(hours, 3),
  value = sin(rep(hours, 3) / 1440 * 4 * pi) * 50 + 50 +
          rnorm(3 * length(hours), 0, 8)
)
line_snake(d, fill_color = "#e74c3c")