Thread: [Matplotlib-users] On changing the default tick pad

Whilst agreeing with Kaushik's sentiments on the greatness of 
matplotlib, I thought his example plot nicely illustrates a layout wart 
that I think is easily fixed by changing the default xtick.major.pad, 
xtick.minor.pad, ytick.major.pad and ytick.minor.pad values from 4 to 6.
As well as preventing the x- and y-axis labels running into each other 
in Kaushik's example, the most common case of a 2D plot with 0 lower 
bound on both the x- and y-axes [e.g. plot(rand(10))] looks better with 
the default font when pad=6. Just to bolster my case, according to the 
gestalt theory "Law of Proximity" 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology>, the labels, which are 
currently closer to each other at the axis intersection than to the axes 
themselves become separated enough from one another so that they become 
visually associated with the axes in this region.

As an aside, I went looking for Matlab plotting examples and some appear 
to match the pad=4 padding whereas others are more like pad=6.

Of course I shall change this in my matplotlibrc file. I just thought 
I'd see if I could provoke a revolution,

Gary R.

On 3/21/2009 11:33 PM Gary Ruben apparently wrote:
> Whilst agreeing with Kaushik's sentiments on the greatness of 
> matplotlib, I thought his example plot nicely illustrates a layout wart 
> that I think is easily fixed by changing the default xtick.major.pad, 
> xtick.minor.pad, ytick.major.pad and ytick.minor.pad values from 4 to 6.
> As well as preventing the x- and y-axis labels running into each other 
> in Kaushik's example, the most common case of a 2D plot with 0 lower 
> bound on both the x- and y-axes [e.g. plot(rand(10))] looks better with 
> the default font when pad=6.

Yes indeed.
I would like to see examples justifying the current default.
Alan Isaac
(another user)

I tend to agree -- but worry that such a global change may have 
unintended consequences.

I'm pretty tight on time at the moment, but one way to test this theory 
would be to run examples/test/backend_driver.py with the new settings.  
This will generate output for most of the examples.  Then using an image 
viewing tool like gthumb or something, go through all the examples and 
make sure things get better in all cases, and never worse.  Let us know 
about the worse ones to see if they have easy workarounds.

If they mostly look good, I think we should consider changing the 
default for new non-maintenance versions going forward.

Cheers,
Mike

Alan G Isaac wrote:
> On 3/21/2009 11:33 PM Gary Ruben apparently wrote:
>   
>> Whilst agreeing with Kaushik's sentiments on the greatness of 
>> matplotlib, I thought his example plot nicely illustrates a layout wart 
>> that I think is easily fixed by changing the default xtick.major.pad, 
>> xtick.minor.pad, ytick.major.pad and ytick.minor.pad values from 4 to 6.
>> As well as preventing the x- and y-axis labels running into each other 
>> in Kaushik's example, the most common case of a 2D plot with 0 lower 
>> bound on both the x- and y-axes [e.g. plot(rand(10))] looks better with 
>> the default font when pad=6.
>>     
>
> Yes indeed.
> I would like to see examples justifying the current default.
> Alan Isaac
> (another user)
>
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-- 
Michael Droettboom
Science Software Branch
Operations and Engineering Division
Space Telescope Science Institute
Operated by AURA for NASA