also is there a way to get the spacing of major ticks with
> minor ticks? I would like to set my tick labels based on
> what data point is being plotted.
Have you seen Chapter 5 of the users guide "Tick Locators and
Formatters", and the examples
examples/major_minor_demo1.py
examples/major_minor_demo2.py
examples/custom_ticker1.py
You can extend the tick locating and formatting classes to do what you
want.
See also http://matplotlib.sf.net/matplotlib.ticker.html
Let me know if you have any more questions....
JDH