title: R Make barchart with unicode symbol instead of bars
body: <p>I'd like to plot a (kind of) barchart, but rather than using bars, I'd like to use a unicode symbol. Is this possible?</p>
  
  <p>I know how to use a unicode character as a symbol (points); for example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>plot(1,1,pch=-0x0001F3E2, cex=5, col="gray30")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but how can make the symbol substitute the bars?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong><br>
  As suggested by Eric, I'll try to write a minimal reproducible example...</p>
  
  <p>Given variable x:</p>
  
  <pre><code>x &lt;- c(2,3,4,2,1)
  barplot(x)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to produce a barplot using custom symbols rather than bars. Something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>plot(1:5,rep(0,5),pch=-0x0001F3E2, cex=x, col="gray30")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problem is that I am not able to vertical align sysmbols as I can do with text:</p>
  
  <pre><code>plot(1:5,rep(0,5),type="n", ylim=c(0,1),bty="n")
  text(1:5,0,"A",cex=c(2,5,3,3,1),adj=c(0.6,0))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So, a sort of solution to my problem, although not ideal, is to use
  some custom system font with package extrafont.</p>
  
  <p>For example, using font "Destiny's Little Houses" (<a href="http://www.dafont.com/destiny-little-hous.font" rel="nofollow">http://www.dafont.com/destiny-little-hous.font</a>)
  I am able to produce some nice infographics:</p>
  
  <pre><code>plot(1:5,rep(0,5),type="n",ylim=c(0,1),bty="n")
  text(1:5,0.1,"A",cex=c(2,5,3,3,1),adj=c(0.6,0),family="Destiny's Little Houses")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So, rather than having bars I have an image whose size changes according to some variable (using "cex").</p>
  
  <p>This is not ideal, first of all because I'd like to be able to import any image (ex. using the png package).</p>
  
  <p>So, is it possible to:    </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>import an image file and use it as the symbol in plot (rather than one of the available sysmbols using pch)?</li>
  <li>Vertical align symbols so that I get a kind of custom barchart?</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Thanks
  António</p>