Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

For more context, please read the function documentation and refer to the documentation of the companion package, {asar}.

Captions and alternative text (alt text)

How are captions and alt text constructed?

When a plotting function (e.g., plot_biomass(), table_indices(), save_all_plots()) is run, placeholders within the plot’s associated alt text and captions are replaced with key quantities (see the {asar} package’s Accessibility vignette and the {stockplotr} “How captions and alternative text are generated” vignette for more details).

As stated in the Accessibility vignette’s “Your to-do list” section, you should always:

1. Check that these alt texts and captions have been assembled correctly.

2. Write the final component of each figure’s alt text.

How can I alter the captions and/or alt text?

Directly edit the rda’s caption or alt_text objects. To do so, assign a new value to the text you wish to change. For example:

1. Locate your rda file. It may be called something like “biomass_figure.rda”.

2. Load it into your R environment. You can do this by clicking the file or by using a command like this: load("biomass_figure.rda"). It will probably be called rda.

3. If you want to change the caption to “my new caption”, you’d enter the following command: rda[["caption"]] <- "my new caption". To change the alt text, you’d change “caption” to “alt_text” (e.g., rda[["alt_text"]] <- "my new alt text".).

4. Save the changes to the rda’s file (most likely you’ll want to overwrite your original rda) by entering the following command: save(rda, file = 'biomass_figure.rda').

If I recreate a figure or table, will its caption and/or alt text be updated/overwritten?

No. When you export a figure or table as an rda, key quantities are calculated and inserted into its associated caption and alt text. If you regenerate a figure or table, its caption and alt text won’t change.

How can I change or update captions and alt text?

Individual figures/tables (e.g., plot_biomass())

1. Open your caps_alt_text.csv file. Find the row where the “label” column is the name of the plotting function, minus the “plot_” or “table_”, and delete the row. For example, the label for plot_biomass() is “biomass”.

2. Open the inst/resources/captions_alt_text_template.csv file. Find the same row and copy it.

3. Paste the row into the caps_alt_text.csv file.

4. Rerun the function so that the key quantities are newly calculated and added to the caps_alt_text.csv file.

All available figures and tables (e.g., save_all_plots())

1. Delete the captions_alt_text.csv file

2. Rerun save_all_plots()

NOTE: It is possible to directly edit the captions_alt_text.csv file to change the caption or alt text. However, if you wish to do anything besides adding or removing text, we recommend using the two-step workflow, above, to avoid potential issues where an incorrect argument was used to calculate other (now incorrect) key quantities. For instance, end_year may be used to calculate values associated with F, which are then used to calculate other values.