I agree with Jonathan and would very much like to see this feature implemented.
The example shown in the thread didn't show the "×" symbol, however, which
would be nice to have -- e.g. it should read 2.0 × 10² rather than 2.0 10².
David
On Oct 19, 2010, at 1:08 PM, Friedrich Romstedt wrote:
> 2010/10/18 Jonathan Slavin <jsla...@cfa.harvard.edu>:
>> I'm wondering if there's some relatively automatic way to have the
>> ticklabels to come out in scientific notation for an axis that uses a
>> linear scale (and has a range that warrants scientific notation)? For
>> example, an axis that goes from 0 to 2.E18 by default uses the labels 0,
>> 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and puts 1e18 at the end of the axis. To me this is
>> unappealing. 1e18 is a computer programming way to write the 10^{18} (in
>> LaTeX formatting). In IDL the ticklabels are 5.0x10^{17}, 1.0x10^{18},
>> 1.5x10^{18}, 2.0x10^{18}. This is one instance where I think IDL gets
>> it right and matplotlib gets it wrong. So, as far as I can tell, one
>> can give the ticklabels by hand, and so I could achieve my desired
>> labels that way, but it'd be nice to have a more automatic way to do it.
>> Searching the examples, I've come up empty so far. I would also
>> advocate changing the default format for labeling axes that fall in this
>> category. Do the developers have any opinions on this?
>
> There's a thread some monthes ago about this, I provided code to do
> this. Currently, this Formatter class didn't make it into matplotlib
> due a lack of providing a patch by me. If others agree that this
> would be a good feature, I'll clean the code if necessary and provide
> another patch for this.
>
> Looking for the thread ...
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.matplotlib.general/23824/match=scientific+notation+friedrich
>
> IIRC, the formatter class does NOT provide automatic choice of
> appropriate exponent, i.e. you have to provide this in instantiation
> time.
>
> hth, and let me know about any progress,
> Friedrich
>
> P.S.: I just gave the thread link and didn't look into it further.
> But it should be the message I remembered.
>
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