[Matplotlib-users] Re: [matplotlib-devel] new scientific notation format

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

>>>>> "Darren" == Darren Dale <dd...@co...> writes:

    Darren> Hi Everyone, There is a new formatter in ticker.py called
    Darren> NewScalarFormatter. If you have scientific notation in
    Darren> your plots, you may like the results. If you would like to
    Darren> try it out, you need to change
    Darren> ScalarFormatter->OldScalarFormatter, and
    Darren> NewScalarFormatter->ScalarFormatter. It will then be the
    Darren> default for linear scale axes. I would appreciate
    Darren> feedback, it will hopefully become the default at some
    Darren> point.

Maybe you can provide an example that illustrates the range of normal
and pathological changes that the new formatter is designed to
address, so that people can compare the results visually.

The basic problem the new formatter is trying to solve is to properly
format cases where the view limits range from something like 2e10 to
2e10+5.  

  from pylab import *
  x = arange(5.0)
  plot(x+2e10, x)
  show()

Ie, limits where the range is small compared to end values.  In this
case the new formatter figures out what the offset is, factors it out
of the ticks, and displays it on the axis, so for the case above, you
would see something like this for the x-axis

  ----------------------------------------------
  0       1        2       3       4        5                              
                                             +2e10

and the location of the offset text (2e10) is configurable.

JDH