Line break in categorical axis labels

Feature request (similar to #7317)

Please introduce some straightforward way to include line breaks (e.g. “\n” or “<br>”) in labels of categorical axes (currently these are ignored):

factors = ["a very long label \n that needs a break", 
           "a very long label \\n that needs a break",  
           "a very long label <br> that needs a break", 
          ]
x = [50, 40, 65,]
p = figure(y_range=factors)
p.circle(x, factors, size=15, fill_color="orange", line_color="green", line_width=3)
show(p)

[birdsarah]

Just adding my voice to needing this. I’m not sure about your categorization of uncommon @bryevdv.

[birdsarah]

A thought / motivating example. May or may not be helpful.

I’m working with a lot of categorical, long-name data at the moment. One of the more frustrating aspects of plotting it with bokeh is that I need to constantly be fiddling with the plot height to get my labels spaced out sufficiently so I can read them.

In the case of categorical labels I would argue that you definitely want to see all the labels (it’s not like linear / numeric axes where you can just put in labels as convenient). So it’s a case where you want the plot to grow (typically in height because it’s far easier to read labels that are oriented on a y-axis) based on the number of factors you have and the desired spacing.

I know the layout engine has been overhauled since I worked on it, so maybe it’s more flexible now. Certainly when I worked on it, I would not have wanted to deal with plot height being set like this.

But I just wanted to throw this out there as a motivating example.

I would also be happy with a non-plotting-api solution. That is, I have to explicitly setup my SelfSizingAxis/Range. Because this would still be more convenient than iterating plot heights.