Could the theme support axis lines and ticks being _not_ on top of geoms?

[davidhodge931]

There are situations where it would nice to be able to easily make the the axis line/ticks not be on top of geoms.

I noticed the theme argument has a panel.ontop argument. So I wondered if you guys would consider adding equivalent theme arguments for the axis.

Something like theme(axis.ontop = TRUE, axis.ontop.x = TRUE, axis.ontop.y = TRUE).

I suppose for consistency with the existing theme grammar, these axis arguments should apply to the axis text too.

Thanks for your consideration, and the great ggplot2 dev work!

library(dplyr)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'dplyr'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
#> 
#>     filter, lag
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#> 
#>     intersect, setdiff, setequal, union
library(ggplot2)
library(palmerpenguins)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'palmerpenguins'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:datasets':
#> 
#>     penguins, penguins_raw

d <- penguins |>
  add_row(
    flipper_length_mm = 190,
    body_mass_g = 2500,
    species = "Adelie",
  ) |> 
  add_row(
    flipper_length_mm = 165,
    body_mass_g = 3000,
    species = "Adelie",
  )

p <- d |>
  ggplot() +
  geom_point(aes(x = flipper_length_mm, y = body_mass_g),
             colour = "steelblue", size = 3) +
  theme_classic() +
  scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0, 0)) +
  scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0, 0)) +
  coord_cartesian(clip = "off")

p
#> Warning: Removed 2 rows containing missing values or values outside the scale range
#> (`geom_point()`).

#so something like this to make the axis line/ticks not ontop
# p +
#   theme(axis.ontop = FALSE) 
# 
# p +
#   theme(axis.ontop.x = FALSE) +
#   theme(axis.ontop.y = FALSE) 

^{Created on 2025-05-14 with reprex v2.1.1}