Newbie matplotlib questions re: pie charts and display

Community matplotlib-users
1

Hello,

I've recently been working with matplotlib to create some charts of some
data I've gathered. I've been impressed with how easy it is to use, but I
have a few questions. I'd appreciate any help you can offer me with the
following:

1. Just what does axes() do with pie charts, anyway? I've tried varying the
parameters, but haven't quite grasped what it's for.

2. How do I make the pie of the pie chart smaller, leaving more room for the
labels? Consider http://www.ethicsgirls.com/stuff/report/cameras_used.png
(which I may well move to a bar chart anyway). Some of the labels are
clipped at the sides. What's the best way to avoid this?

3. When plotting a chart with plot(), can I vary the alpha value of the
markers? If so, how?

4. I need to stick a footnote in the bottom corner of my charts. Can I do
this natively in matplotlib or will I have to do it with a separate library
afterwards?

5. Can I have my xtick labels oriented vertically? I'm trying to avoid an X
axis that looks like this:
http://www.ethicsgirls.com/stuff/report/date_taken.png

Thanks,

···

--
Alex Pounds (Creature) .~. http://www.alexpounds.com/
                                        /V\ http://www.ethicsgirls.com/
                                       // \\
"Variables won't; Constants aren't" /( )\
                                       ^`~'^

2

4. I need to stick a footnote in the bottom corner of my charts. Can I do
this natively in matplotlib or will I have to do it with a separate library
afterwards?

For the sake of others searching the archives, here are the answers I've
found out for myself so far:

4. You can do this with matplotlib:
figtext(0.98, 0.05, u'�2007 Alexpounds.com', ha='right')
This puts a copyright notice in the bottom right of a chart.

5. Can I have my xtick labels oriented vertically?

Yep. Just pass rotation="vertical" in to xticks(). Easy. Though this may
overlap with the figtext above - I haven't got that bit sorted yet...

···

On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 01:14:44PM +0100, Alex Pounds wrote:

--
Alex Pounds (Creature) .~. http://www.alexpounds.com/
                                        /V\ http://www.ethicsgirls.com/
                                       // \\
"Variables won't; Constants aren't" /( )\
                                       ^`~'^