Assign a shared colour-key column to a Tracks or data frame

Writes a colour-key column (`into`, default `".colour"`) keyed on `by`, so the tracks and any overlays drawn on top share one colour scale. Two modes are chosen automatically by cardinality: * **Cycled** – `by = "trajectory"` (the trajectory id column), or any column with more than `n` levels: the key is a cycled `1:n` index ([cycle_colours()]), so a high-cardinality key stays legible. * **Distinct** – a column with `n` or fewer levels: the key holds the column's raw values (as a factor), so a legend is meaningful.

Usage

assign_colour_key(x, by, n = 20, reference = NULL, into = ".colour")

assign_color_key(x, by, n = 20, reference = NULL, into = ".colour")

Arguments

x

A `Tracks` or data frame to annotate.

by

`"trajectory"` (the trajectory id column) or a grouping column name.

n

Colour cap / cycle length (positive integer). Default 20.

reference

Optional `Tracks`/frame whose key order to reuse. Default `NULL` uses `x` itself.

into

Name of the key column to add. Default `".colour"`.

Value

`x` with the `into` column added.

Details

Pass `reference` (another Tracks or frame sharing the key) to borrow its level order, so a given key value gets the same colour in both – e.g. tracks and their heading markers. If `by` names a column absent from `x` but present on `reference`, it is borrowed by matching trajectory id.

American spellings

Every `colour...` argument and the `assign_colour_*` / `cycle_colours` / `hf_colour_col` functions accept the American `color...` spelling as an alias (e.g. `color`, `color_col`, `track_color`). British spelling is canonical; supplying both spellings of a pair is an error.

See also

[cycle_colours()]

Examples

ts <- simulate_tracks(n_points = 10, output = "trajset")
ts <- assign_colour_key(ts, by = "trajectory")