How do I limit the border size on a matplotlib graph?

graph, matplotlib, plot, python

Solution

Since it looks like you're just using a single subplot, you may want to skip `add_subplot` and go straight to `add_axes`. This will allow you to give the size of the axes (in figure-relative coordinates), so you can make it as large as you want within the figure. In your case, this would mean your code would look something like

    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

    fig = plt.figure()

    # add_axes takes [left, bottom, width, height]
    border_width = 0.05
    ax_size = [0+border_width, 0+border_width, 
               1-2*border_width, 1-2*border-width]
    ax = fig.add_axes(ax_size)
    ax.plot_date((dates, dates), (highs, lows), '-', color='black')
    ax.plot_date(dates, closes, '-', marker='_', color='black')

    ax.set_title('Title')
    ax.grid(True)
    fig.set_figheight(96)
    fig.set_figwidth(24)

If you wanted, you could even put the parameters to `set_figheight`/`set_figwidth` directly in the `figure()` call.

Problem

I'm making some pretty big graphs, and the whitespace in the border is taking up a lot of pixels that would be better used by data. It seems that the border grows as the graph grows. Here are the guts of my graphing code: ``` import matplotlib from pylab import figure fig = figure() ax = fig.add_subplot(111) ax.plot_date((dates, dates), (highs, lows), '-', color='black') ax.plot_date(dates, closes, '-', marker='_', color='black') ax.set_title('Title') ax.grid(True) fig.set_figheight(96) fig.set_figwidth(24) ``` Is there a way to reduce the size of the border? Maybe a setting somewhere that would allow me to keep the border at a constant 2 inches or so?

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