[matplotlib-devel] Improving axis spine joins and final tick placement

[Andy B. <an...@in...>]

Hi all,

I have a question/request about improving a minor aspect of plot
cosmetics, namely that axis spines seem to be rendered as 4 individual
lines, meaning that the corners of the axes boundary do not match up
with a neat corner but have a "stair" appearance. I've attached a
screenshot from a zoomed PDF showing this effect, made with MPL 1.3.1
from Ubuntu 14.04... so apologies if it's already fixed in the latest
1.4.x versions. This effect is also visible in PNG output, as just a
couple of pixels in the corners that look "ragged". Would it be possible
to tidy this up... or point me to where in the code this rendering is
done, if it's something easy that I could maybe help with?

At the same time, I note in this zoom that the axis is showing tick
marks at the very end(s) of the axis, where they overlap with the other
axis/plot boundary line: is there an automatic way to elide tick marks
in that redundant position?

Apologies if this isn't a good place for these queries/requests -- I had
a look at the matplotlib-user and -announce list archives linked from
the web page and they seem to have gone defunct in 2012, hence coming
here. I am happy to do a bit of development to address little cosmetic
tweaks like this, but am not yet familiar with MPL internals.

Thanks!
Andy

PS. I also have a question about how to enable old-style figures in a
font when using the TeX/PGF rendering backed, cf.
\usepackage[osf]{mathpazo}, but I'll wait to see if this is an
appropriate place for such questions before troubling you with that!

-- 
Dr Andy Buckley, Royal Society University Research Fellow
Particle Physics Expt Group, University of Glasgow / PH Dept, CERN