Nested tags sometimes not working

[stitam]

Related to #440, #445.

From examples at patchwork::plot_annotation()

library(ggplot2)

p1 <- ggplot(mtcars) + geom_point(aes(mpg, disp))
p2 <- ggplot(mtcars) + geom_boxplot(aes(gear, disp, group = gear))
p3 <- ggplot(mtcars) + geom_bar(aes(gear)) + facet_wrap(~cyl)

And then here I am expecting p2 and p3 to have nested tags and they work, I get "A", "B1", "B2":

p1 + (p2 + p3 + plot_layout(tag_level = 'new')) + plot_annotation(tag_levels = c('A', '1'))

But here I am expecting p1 and p2 to have a nested tag and there is no nesting, I get "A", "B", "C":

(p1 + p2 + plot_layout(tag_level = 'new')) + p3 + plot_annotation(tag_levels = c('A', '1'))

Is this a bug or do I misunderstand how nested tags work? Thanks for helping me with this.

[trekonom]

One possible workaround would be to use wrap_plots:

library(ggplot2)
library(patchwork)

wrap_plots(
  list(
    (p1 + p2) + plot_layout(tag_level = "new"),
    p3
  )
) + 
  plot_annotation(tag_levels = c("A", "1"))

^{Created on 2025-11-15 with reprex v2.1.1}

[stitam]

Many thanks @trekonom for clarifying this. Building on your solution I played around with the syntax and it seems we don't have to call list() which simplifies the code. I think I'll always use wrap_plots() whenever I want to generate nested tags automatically, and then I'll have a robust syntax that just works:

wrap_plots(p1, p2 + p3 + plot_layout(tag_level = "new")) + plot_annotation(tag_levels = c("A", "1"))
wrap_plots(p1 + p2 + plot_layout(tag_level = "new"), p3) + plot_annotation(tag_levels = c("A", "1"))

Thanks again for helping me with this.