Plotting with times - axis labels and eliding times

Hi,

   * The time ranges are large (one-second samples over a period of
     several days) and I find the x axis label formats are often
     inappropriate to the scale. How to I control the format of
     the x axis labels?

I only started using matplolib a few days ago, but I think I know how to do what you want:

···

----------------------------------------
import matplotlib.dates as mdates # To read timestamps
    ...
xAxisTimeFormat = '%a\n%H:%M' # Format of time stamps on x-axis
hourLocator = mdates.HourLocator(interval=5) # Every 5 hours
minuteLocator = mdates.MinuteLocator(interval=30) # Every half hour
   ...
ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(hourLocator) # Set major tick marks
ax.xaxis.set_minor_locator(minuteLocator) # Set minor tick marks
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(mdates.DateFormatter(xAxisTimeFormat)) # Format x-axis labels
----------------------------------------

I have a full example of plots that have a point every minute over the course of days:
   MC Production Monitor (FNAL Region)# | University of Wisconsin–Madison
with a link to the full python script at the bottom.

Mike