Re: [Matplotlib-users] Bug with setting axis limits

[John H. <jdh...@ac...>]

>>>>> "Perry" == Perry Greenfield <pe...@st...> writes:
    Perry> Is the essence of the issue here whether clipping is
    Perry> working properly, in particular, the backend clipping? I
    Perry> would have thought that backend clipping should handle this
    Perry> properly.  For which backends does it not? If it doesn't
    Perry> for some, perhaps the issue is to supply our own software
    Perry> clipping; algorithm (possibly much slower though) as an
    Perry> option.

Backend clipping works when the points are on the canvas (the canvas
is the entire figure, not just the axes).  Eg, on a 100x100 canvas,
with a line from (0,0) to (100,100) you can clip to the (25,25)
(75,75) rectangle.  No problems there.

In Srinath's case, we've asked the backend to plot, for example, a
line from (0,-50000), (0,100) and then clip to the (25,25) (75,75)
rectangle.  I don't think the average backend (GTK, Agg) knows what to
do with this line since they expect bitmap/display coords; there are
no backend transformations - everything happens on the front end
(clearly there are pros and cons of this approach, see below).

With data clipping turned, the line class throws out the (0,-50000)
point as illegal.

To fix this in the current framework, we have to identify line
segments in the x,y arrays which intersect the view port but with one
or more end points outside the viewlim, and then draw the appropriate
line through view port.  This issue primarily arises for connected
points (line styles '-', '--', and '-.' ).  For symbol lines, data
clipping already does the right thing, which is to throw the point
away.  However, there are hypothetical wacky cases you can imagine
when you feel like being mean to matplotlib, like a 'o' circle marker
5 million miles from the view limits with a 5 million and one mile
radius.....  For connected lines, this could be very costly to
implement since we have to loop over potentially very long arrays; for
markers it would be worse.

Refactoring transforms to the backend would probably fix this
entirely.  While non-trivial, this may be the best long term solution,
especially when we want to do things like line and patch collections
for efficient drawing of large numbers of objects.  The two major
benefits of the current transform architecture are 1) it lets you
specify locations like 5 points to the left of the right y axes, and
have the transform automatically update in the presence of window
resizes, dpi changes, etc...  Very nice when drawing ticks.... and 2)
backends only have to think about one coord system, display, which
makes it easier to implement a backend.

I'm not convinced that it is a terrible thing to have a policy that
matplotlib only plots line segments and markers whose vertices are in
the axes limits, but I'm open to being convinced.

JDH