How to fix scales by columns in a face_grid-like construction?

Question

I am aware that facet_grid does not allow freeing scaling within rows or columns. So I am trying my luck with facet_wrap instead.

In addition to what I have so far,

data <- data.frame(
    cols = c("A", "A", "A", "A", "B", "B", "B", "B"),
    rows = c(1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2),
    x = c(0, 90, 0, 110, 0, 900, 0, 1100),
    y = c(0, 90, 0, 110, 0, 900, 0, 1100)
)
library(ggplot2)
p <- ggplot(data, aes(x = x, y = y)) +
    geom_line() +
    facet_wrap(~ rows + cols, scales = "free")

how can I fix the horizontal scales in the columns (read: each column separately)? In other words, how to align the horizontal [0, 75] axis with the horizontal [0, 90] axis, and the horizontal [0, 750] axis with the horizontal [0, 900] axis?

Ideally, this would hide the horizontal axis labels in all but the last row.

Answer 1

If you dare venture into github packages, I've recently added an extended version of facet_grid() to the dev version of ggh4x package (disclaimer: I wrote the package). It discriminates scales being 'free' -that can vary between rows / columns- from scales that are 'independent' and free, which can also vary within rows / columns. I guess the functions fits your problem pretty well.

library(ggplot2)
library(ggh4x) # devtools::install_github("teunbrand/ggh4x")

data <- data.frame(
  cols = c("A", "A", "A", "A", "B", "B", "B", "B"),
  rows = c(1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2),
  x = c(0, 90, 0, 110, 0, 900, 0, 1100),
  y = c(0, 90, 0, 110, 0, 900, 0, 1100)
)

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(data, aes(x = x, y = y)) +
  geom_line() +
  facet_grid2(rows ~ cols, scales = "free", independent = "y")

^{Created on 2021-04-16 by the reprex package (v1.0.0)}

Since I only added the function last week or so and it hasn't been tested extensively, please let me know if you find any bugs or have suggestions for improvements.