Patches with an inset do not get tagged when `ignore_tags=TRUE`.

[trekonom]

Happy new year @thomasp85 !

I stumbled over this issue based on this SO post. As documented there, tagging fails when creating a patch of multiple plots containing an inset element each.

Using the (slightly modified) code from the SO post the second plot in the top row does not get tagged:

library(ggplot2)
library(patchwork)

packageVersion("ggplot2")
#> [1] '3.5.1'
packageVersion("patchwork")
#> [1] '1.3.0'

p1 <- ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_point(aes(mpg, disp)) +
  ggtitle("Plot 1")

p2 <- ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(gear, disp, group = gear)) +
  ggtitle("Plot 2")

p3 <- ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_point(aes(hp, wt, colour = mpg)) +
  ggtitle("Plot 3")

p4 <- ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_bar(aes(gear)) +
  labs(x = NULL, y = NULL, title = "Plot 4")

inset <- inset_element(
  p4, 0, 0, 0.6, 0.6,
  ignore_tag = TRUE
)

((p1 + inset) + (p2 + inset)) / p3 +
  plot_annotation(tag_levels = "A")

^{Created on 2025-01-04 with reprex v2.1.1}

Additionally, when using wrap_plots() to create the top row of the patch neither of the top row plots gets tagged:

wrap_plots(p1 + inset, p2 + inset) / p3 +
  plot_annotation(tag_levels = "A")

^{Created on 2025-01-04 with reprex v2.1.1}

I had a look at the underlying issue. From my understanding the issue is that a patch with an inset (with ignore_tag = TRUE) does not get tagged as it gets skipped in recurse_tags:

patchwork/R/plot_annotation.R

Lines 122 to 124 in 2695a9f

	if (is_inset_patch(patches[[i]]) && !has_tag(patches[[i]])) {
	next
	}

)

A possible fix would be to simply drop this check as is should already been accounted for in

patchwork/R/plot_annotation.R

Line 137 in 2695a9f

} else if (has_tag(patches[[i]])) {

, i.e. after dropping lines 122-124 we get the desired result (and all tests still pass):

((p1 + inset) + (p2 + inset)) / p3 +
  plot_annotation(tag_levels = "A")

wrap_plots(p1 + inset, p2 + inset) / p3 +
  plot_annotation(tag_levels = "A")

And it still works for the "examples":

# Tagging also continues to work as expected
p1 +
  inset_element(p2, 0.6, 0.6, 1, 1) +
  plot_annotation(tag_levels = "1")

# but can be turned off, like for wrapped plots
p1 +
  inset_element(p2, 0.6, 0.6, 1, 1, ignore_tag = TRUE) +
  plot_annotation(tag_levels = "1")

^{Created on 2025-01-04 with reprex v2.1.1}