NEWS

---

biscale 1.1.0 (2025-09-01)

• New feature
  • The bi_class_breaks() function now has a si_levels argument to enable printing of rounded breaks' labels with an SI prefix. This is primarily to abbreviate labels for legends.
  • The bi_legend() function now has a base_family argument, which can be paired with the suggested showtext package to display non-Latin characters. See the "Options for Breaks and Legends" vignette for details on using this new feature.
• Internal improvements
  • Addressed documentation issues with linking to other packages

biscale 1.0.0 (2022-05-27)

• New features
  • bi_class() now accepts factors for one or both of the x and y variables, allowing more flexibility for how breaks are calculated. If you want finer grained control over your categories, calculate them ahead of time and then pass the factors on to bi_class().
  • bi_pal(), bi_legend(), bi_scale_fill(), and bi_scale_color() functions all support four-by-four bivariate maps when dim = 4. Note that the original five palettes do not support four-by-four mapping, but very close approximations (e.g. DkBlue2 instead of DkBlue) are now provided in their place. The legacy palettes are all still included in the package.
  • The number of built-in palettes has been greatly expanded, though there are changes from v0.3.0, which was never released on CRAN.
  • Palettes can now be flipped and rotated (or both!), so that each built-in palette can be displayed in four different configurations. This includes the built-in palettes and any custom palettes that are four-by-four or smaller. If you want to flip or rotate larger palettes, you should make those decisions while creating the palette itself.
  • The workflow for allowing custom palettes has been overhauled to simply the process - users can provide a named vector for the pal arguments in the bi_pal(), bi_legend(), bi_scale_fill(), and bi_scale_color() functions. All of these functions will validate your input to ensure that it maps correctly.
  • bi_class() can be used to calculate bivariate breaks for maps larger than four-by-four, though it will return a warning reminding you that these maps are hard to read and that biscale does not provide palettes for larger maps. Instead, you should provide a custom palette.
  • bi_class_breaks() can be used with bi_legend() to facilitate optionally adding break values to your legends. Like bi_class(), this new function accepts both continuous and pre-made factors.
• Breaking changes
  • R version 3.4 is no longer supported - please use at least R version 3.5
    • There is no default supplied for bi_class()'s style argument since bi_class() now accepts factors as well. Users that relied on the default behavior of bi_class() will now receive an error asking you to specify a style for calculating breaks.
• Deprecated functions
  • bi_pal_manual() now returns a warning that it has been deprecated and will be removed in a later release of biscale (planned for the end of 2022). Please update your workflows to use the new approach to generating custom palettes.
• Internal improvements
  • sf is no longer a required dependency and is now suggested - this returns the package to its original release in terms of suggesting sf
  • cowplot is now a suggested dependency
  • All functions have been rewritten to reduce dependencies and duplicative code
• Documentation improvements
  • Documentation updates have been made, including the addition of a number of new examples and vignettes. These include detailed articles on bivariate palettes, working with breaks and legends, and creating bivariate maps with raster data.

biscale 0.3.0

• Add 10 new palettes for a total of 15 native palettes.
• Add options to flip and/or rotate palettes
• Add option to add padding/border to legend
• Add vignette for palette use: see palettes

biscale 0.2.0 (2020-05-06)

• Add sf as a required instead of a suggested dependency. This resolves issues that appeared with newer releases of the tibble packages.
• Drop support for R 3.3 because CI tests now fail on this release. Minimum release of R is now 3.4.
• Add bi_scale_color() as a compliment to existing functionality. This adds the ability to create bivariate point and line maps as well.
• Add bi_pal_custom() to support custom palettes.
• Additional confirmatory CI testing for R 3.4 added to Linux (now the xenial distribution), macOS, and Windows.

biscale 0.1.2 (2019-06-22)

• Add non-standard evaluation to bi_legend()
• Fix typos in README.Rmd, index.Rmd, and in bi_class.R
• Remove examples of 2x2 palettes in the bi_pal() help file to address NOTE on CRAN checks (only appeared for Solaris)
• Test biscale with new release of ggplot2 and the cowplot release candidate - no problems detected

biscale 0.1.1 (2019-05-19)

• CRAN release version
• Add installation instructions and Zenodo badge to README and pkgdown site
• Add hex logo to README and pkgdown site
• Add cran-comments.md

biscale 0.1.0

• Added a NEWS.md file to track changes to the package.
• Develop bivariate mapping functionality (bi_ functions)
• Add example data set (stl_race_income data)
• Implement unit testing with both Travis and Appveyor as well as Code Coverage tracking
• Add .github community files
• Add LICENSE
• Add vignette for getting started (biscale)
• Add pkgdown site functionality