Re: [Matplotlib-users] faq: reducing figure.figsize cuts off labels and tick marks

[Darren D. <dsd...@gm...>]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 4:23 AM, Daniel Mader
<dan...@go...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> there has been a similar question recently but I couldn't figure out
> if or how this is solved:
>
> I'd like to reduce the figure size so that I can add it to a LaTeX
> document without scaling (PDF output with LaTeX font rendering). For
> that, I need to adapt the font sizes, too.
>
> Unfortunately, the canvas is not properly scaled so that the axis
> labels and the possibly the tick marks are cut off.
>
> Is this a bug, feature, design flaw? How can I properly work around
> it, i.e. reduce the graph automatically for a given figsize/font size
> combination so that everything fits on the figure?
>
> An example follows to demonstrate, thanks in advance

I use matplotlib for this purpose pretty frequently. A few tricks:

from http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/users/customizing.html :
# note that font.size controls default text sizes.  To configure
# special text sizes tick labels, axes, labels, title, etc, see the rc
# settings for axes and ticks. Special text sizes can be defined
# relative to font.size, using the following values: xx-small, x-small,
# small, medium, large, x-large, xx-large, larger, or smaller

# specify the figure canvas size, in inches
figure(figsize=(3.4, 4))

# place the axes in the figure window
# specifying (left, bottom, width, height) as fraction of figure size
# adjust those positions to make enough room for tick and axis labels
axes([0.15, 0.12, 0.8, 0.83])

Specify the dpi for you screen, so the figure rendered on your screen
is the correct size. This is figure.dpi, best to set it in
matplotlibrc.

Darren