Text labels with background colour in R

Question

I was wondering if there is a simple way to add text labels with a contrasting background to an R plot using the base graphic system. Until now I have always used the rect

Answer 1

Quick hack using altcode character for a box:

plot(x=runif(1000), y=runif(1000), 
     type="p", pch=16, col="#40404050")

labels <- c("some text", "something else")

boxes <- sapply(nchar(labels), function(n) 
  paste(rep("█", n), collapse=""))

pos <- rbind(c(0.2, .1), c(.5, .5))
text(pos, labels=boxes, col="#CCCCCC99")
text(pos, labels=labels)