[Matplotlib-devel] Straw poll on default offset text precision

[Eric Firing]

On 2016/01/05 3:31 AM, Antony Lee wrote:
> Currently, after e.g. `plot([10000000, 10000010])`, the y-axis is
> labeled "0, ..., 10 + 1e7".  The physicist in me always thought that
> this was inelegant, as the offset is specified with much less precision
> than the increments.
>
> Yes, I know, there are physical cases where this makes sense, but here
> this is really just due to "sloppy" formatting: after `plot([12345671,
> 12345678])`, the y-axis is labeled "0, ..., 7 + 1.2345671e7", so both
> the offset and the increments have the same precision (ideally, perhaps
> the offset should be written with the same exponent as the increments,
> so just 1,234,567 here).
>
> Although the issue is "relatively" easy to fix, this will give rise to a
> lot of zeros in pathological cases such as `plot([.5, .50000001])`
> (currently 0, ..., 1 x 1e-8 + 5e-1, but 0, ..., 1 x 1e-8 + 0.50000000
> after the change).  But again, perhaps it makes more sense to actually
> display these zeros.

I don't think that displaying those zeros is a net gain, but I don't 
feel strongly either way.

Eric

>
> Thoughts?
>
> Antony
>
>
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