Plot a legend outside of the plotting area in base graphics?

Question

As the title says: How can I plot a legend outside the plotting area when using base graphics?

I thought about fiddling around with layout

Answer 1

I like to do it like this:

par(oma=c(0, 0, 0, 5))
plot(1:3, rnorm(3), pch=1, lty=1, type="o", ylim=c(-2,2))
lines(1:3, rnorm(3), pch=2, lty=2, type="o")
legend(par('usr')[2], par('usr')[4], bty='n', xpd=NA,
       c("group A", "group B"), pch=c(1, 2), lty=c(1,2))

The only tweaking required is in setting the right margin to be wide enough to accommodate the legend.

However, this can also be automated:

dev.off() # to reset the graphics pars to defaults
par(mar=c(par('mar')[1:3], 0)) # optional, removes extraneous right inner margin space
plot.new()
l <- legend(0, 0, bty='n', c("group A", "group B"), 
            plot=FALSE, pch=c(1, 2), lty=c(1, 2))
# calculate right margin width in ndc
w <- grconvertX(l$rect$w, to='ndc') - grconvertX(0, to='ndc')
par(omd=c(0, 1-w, 0, 1))
plot(1:3, rnorm(3), pch=1, lty=1, type="o", ylim=c(-2, 2))
lines(1:3, rnorm(3), pch=2, lty=2, type="o")
legend(par('usr')[2], par('usr')[4], bty='n', xpd=NA,
       c("group A", "group B"), pch=c(1, 2), lty=c(1, 2))