Thread: [Matplotlib-users] legend outside of the plot

Hi,

As far I understand this a plot is per default covering the more or less whole 
space. Now, is it possible to position a legend outside of a plot, e.g. on 
the right of the plot. "legend" offers to supply the loc-argument with a 
tuple to do that, but that doesn't create more space and hence most legends 
will appear truncated. The only solution I came up with is to limit the 
plotting area (using "axes") and to position the legend manually. Is there an 
alternative?

TIA
Cheers
Christian

Christian Meesters wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> As far I understand this a plot is per default covering the more or less whole 
> space. Now, is it possible to position a legend outside of a plot, e.g. on 
> the right of the plot. "legend" offers to supply the loc-argument with a 
> tuple to do that, but that doesn't create more space and hence most legends 
> will appear truncated. The only solution I came up with is to limit the 
> plotting area (using "axes") and to position the legend manually. Is there an 
> alternative?
> 
> TIA
> Cheers
> Christian
> 

I think you have to fiddle with the axes (see figlegend_demo.py in the
examples folder). As far as I know, there is no such thing like
gnuplot's "set key out" switch.

cheer,
steve

-- 
Random number generation is the art of producing pure gibberish as
quickly as possible.

>>>>> "Christian" == Christian Meesters <mee...@un...> writes:

    Christian> Hi, As far I understand this a plot is per default
    Christian> covering the more or less whole space. Now, is it
    Christian> possible to position a legend outside of a plot,
    Christian> e.g. on the right of the plot. "legend" offers to
    Christian> supply the loc-argument with a tuple to do that, but
    Christian> that doesn't create more space and hence most legends
    Christian> will appear truncated. The only solution I came up with
    Christian> is to limit the plotting area (using "axes") and to
    Christian> position the legend manually. Is there an alternative?

You have to do the layout yourself -- you can also use the
"subplots_adjust" to set the bottom, top, left, right, etc of the axes
which may be easier than using "axes" itself.

We could add some auto-layout capability as we do for the colorbar...

JDH

If you are just creating graphic images you could always send the legend
to a different figure, and then print both figures to file. You could
then munge a layout together for whatever document you are creating.

On Fri, 2006-08-04 at 16:03 +0200, Christian Meesters wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> As far I understand this a plot is per default covering the more or less whole 
> space. Now, is it possible to position a legend outside of a plot, e.g. on 
> the right of the plot. "legend" offers to supply the loc-argument with a 
> tuple to do that, but that doesn't create more space and hence most legends 
> will appear truncated. The only solution I came up with is to limit the 
> plotting area (using "axes") and to position the legend manually. Is there an 
> alternative?
> 
> TIA
> Cheers
> Christian
> 
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