I added the .matplotlibrc file and that definitely
> helps. Thanks. Regarding the symbols, I changed your file
> to the match mine and I get symbols. Here's the change I
> made:
...snip...
> what is the difference here? Thank you very much for your
> help.
If you are not passing a format string (eg 'r-') you need to
explicitly set the marker symbol. For no marker at all, use the
string 'None'
pylab.plot_date(dates, y, color ='r', marker='None',
linestyle ='--',
linewidth = 1)
Using the string 'None' instead of the symbol None is a bit of a wart,
because None is currently interpreted to mean "use the rc default".
JDH