[Matplotlib-users] saving an axes to draw in a different figure

[<jas...@cr...>]

I'm trying to draw the axes from one figure directly over the axes for 
another figure, in a sense, combining the two axes as two layers on one 
figure.

So, first I get an axes instance, "ax".

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig=plt.figure()
fig.add_subplot(111)
plt.plot(range(10), [i^2 for i in range(10)])
ax=fig.axes[0]
plt.savefig('test.png')


Okay, now I have the axes "ax".  I want to draw ax directly on top of 
the following figure, and get a result that would be the same as if I 
had called the plot command above directly in the following code.  All 
I'm passed in my real code is the newax variable below, which is why I 
use newax.get_figure()).

fig=plt.figure()
newax=fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.set_figure(newax.get_figure())
newax.get_figure().add_axes(ax,label="newax")
plt.savefig('test2.png')

However, the result of test2.png is not very pretty and definitely not 
what I want.  The tick labels for the y-axis are all scrunched up, for 
example.

Can anyone help?

For those curious, what I'm doing is working on getting the Sage 
graphics code to be able to wrap and intelligently display matplotlib 
axes objects, so that a person could easily create a matplotlib axes, 
wrap it in the Sage graphics class, and then be able to manipulate it in 
Sage.  In order for this to work, it seems like I need to save the axes 
object I care about, and then when Sage composes it's final figure 
(using matplotlib), it passes me an AxesSubplot object.  I need to 
somehow take that subplot object and draw my saved axes on it in the 
most intelligent way possible.  In the code above, I try taking the 
given AxesSubplot object, getting the figure from that, and then just 
adding my saved axes to that figure.  Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks,

Jason

--
Jason Grout