Plotly/Vistime - overlapping labels

Question

I have a simple timeline I've built using Vistime/Plotly:

library(vistime)
library(plotly)
data <- read.csv(text="event,group,start,end,color
                       Bought Apples,Shopping,2020-06-15,2020-10-15,#fed8b1 
                       Shoes,Shopping,2020-07-01,2020-07-01,#fed8b1 
                       Shoes,Shopping,2020-07-01,2020-07-01,#fed8b1 
                       Shoes,Shopping,2020-07-02,2020-07-02,#fed8b1
                       Shirts,Shopping,2020-07-01,2020-07-01,#fed8b1 
                       Invoice,Charity,2020-08-30,2020-08-30,#fed8b1 
                       Report 1,Work,2020-06-10,2020-06-10,#ffcccb  
                       Meeting 5,Meetings,2020-08-15,2020-08-15,#b19cd9  ")



p <- vistime(data)
pb <- plotly_build(p)

#change label size
for (i in 1:length(pb$x$data)) {
  if (pb$x$data[[i]]$mode == "text") pb$x$data[[i]]$textfont$size <- 10
}

#change x axis font size:
#pb$x$layout$xaxis$tickfont <- list(size = 28)

# change marker size
for (i in 1:length(pb$x$data)) {
  if (pb$x$data[[i]]$mode == "markers") pb$x$data[[i]]$marker$size <- 20
}
pb

Which gives me:

As you can see, if there are multiple points clustered close together, the labels collide. Is there any fairly easy way to avoid this problem? An out-of-the box solution that isn't too complex? I'm wondering if there's any built in methods in Vistime or Plotly to deal with this.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, Plotly has no option to avoid these overlapping labels (or maybe I just don't know about one). However, using gg_vistime() and hc_vistime() these overlaps are avoided automatically:

gg_vistime(data)

hc_vistime(data)

Documentation:

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/vistime/vignettes/gg_vistime-vignette.html

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/vistime/vignettes/hc_vistime-vignette.html

Disclaimer: I wrote this package