ggplot2 - ggplot grobs align with tableGrob

Question

I'm having difficulty to find solution for aligning ggplot grob and table grob. I tried to follow the instruction here but still didn't give the results I wanted.

library(grid)
library(gridExtra)
library(ggplot2)
library(tibble)
library(gtable)
dat <- tibble::rownames_to_column(mtcars, "car") #convert rownames to first col

plot1 <- ggplot(dat, aes(car, mpg)) +
    geom_bar(stat = "identity") +
    coord_flip()

g1 <- ggplotGrob(plot1)
tb1 <- tableGrob(dat$cyl)
g1 <- gtable_add_cols(g1, unit(0.2, "npc"))
g1 <- gtable_add_grob(g1, grobs = tb1, t=3, l=ncol(g1), b=6, r=ncol(g1))

grid.newpage()
grid.draw(g1)

I would like that each cell in the table be aligned to related bar in histogram, but still couldn't understand how the t,l,b,r be implemented from the layout.This is the output I got

Answer 1

I had a similar question as above when trying to make something like a forestplot in R using ggplot2 and didn't find any of the other solutions fit my needs. The answer above didn't work for me - the table didn't show up. So I hacked together a codewise not that pretty solution, but I actually kind of like the cleanliness visual output.

The things I like about this solution are:

• I aligned a set of custom text not in a table, but just in a figure on the right, where the alignment matched for each text entry and each label in the figure.
• I used a centered ggtitle to align a "column heading" above each set of text. These could be strings of any kind (in my actual use, I had point estimates and confidence intervals).

library(gridExtra)
library(ggplot2)

dat <- data.frame(
    label = c("A", "B", "C"),
    point_est = c(1,2,3),
    lb_ci = c(.5, 1.5, 2.5),
    ub_ci = c(1.5, 2.5, 3.5),
    n = c(50, 100, 150),
    total = c(75, 150, 200)
)

plot1 <- ggplot(dat, aes(x=point_est, y=label)) +
    geom_point() +
    geom_errorbarh(aes(xmin=lb_ci, xmax=ub_ci), height=.5) +
    ggtitle("Some measure") +
    ylab(NULL) + xlab("some effect estimate")

tab_base <- ggplot(dat, aes(y=label)) +
    ylab(NULL) + xlab("  ") + 
    theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5, size=12), ## centering title on text
        axis.text.x=element_text(color="white"), ## need text to be printed so it stays aligned with figure but white so it's invisible
        axis.line=element_blank(),
        axis.text.y=element_blank(),axis.ticks=element_blank(),
        axis.title.y=element_blank(),legend.position="none",
        panel.background=element_blank(),panel.border=element_blank(),panel.grid.major=element_blank(),
        panel.grid.minor=element_blank(),plot.background=element_blank())

tab1 <- tab_base + 
    geom_text(aes(x=1, label=n)) + 
    ggtitle("n")

tab2 <- tab_base +
    geom_text(aes(x=1, label=total)) + 
    ggtitle("total")

lay <-  matrix(c(1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3), nrow=1)
grid.arrange(plot1, tab1, tab2, layout_matrix = lay)