test conversion: move old-style test to new-style test
test conversion: remove template for old-style tests
testing: use all builtin nose plugins in old test runner script
testing: remove duplicate code
fix test_dates to chek for RuntimeError on identical date lim test
use the max tick limit for all tick locators
raise if num ticks exceeds some threshold to address sf bug 2715172
testing: add test for bug SF#2715172
