Re: [Matplotlib-users] plot_date problem

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

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Groszkowski <pio...@ho...> writes:

    Peter> I found another issue with plot_date. Dont have a simple
    Peter> example yet, and hope that this is something 'obvious' and
    Peter> I don't have to bother.

There is clearly something wrong with the autoscale function of one of
the date tick locators.  It would help to know which one.  plot_date
looks at the range of your date data and tries to pick the appropriate
date tick locator based on that range (ie a YearLocator, MonthLocator,
MinuteLocator, etc).  If I knew which tick locator was behaving badly,
it would help me fix the problem.

If you 

  print ax.xaxis._majorLocator

after the call to plot_date, and let me know which locator it is, I
can probably figure out where the problem is.  To simplify, don't
explicitly set the date xlim range when you do this.

On a side note, in your example code you call

  ax.viewLim.intervalx().set_bounds(minXValueImPlotting, maxXValueImPlotting)

I assume you did this to narrow down the possible causes of problems.
As you know, this is the call that ax.set_xlim makes under the hood.
But in general, it's safest to stick to the axes API, ie, call

  ax.set_xlim(minXValueImPlotting, maxXValueImPlotting)

since this interface is guaranteed to be stable.

JDH