how to remove the white space of invisiable axes in matplotlib during active plot? - matplotlib

Question

I want to completely remove white space around my axes during active plot (not save_fig as others asked).
Here we cannot use bbox_inches='tight'. I can use tight_layout(pad=0).
When axis is on, it works fine, it shows all the ticks and x-y labels.
However, in some cases, I set the axis off. What I expected is to see the contents expand to fill up the empty space where the axes are. However, this does not work. It still keep the padding as there are still x-y labels and axes.
How can I remove the white space of invisible axes objects?
edit:
I am aware that I can use ax.set_yticks([]) and ax.set_xticks([]) to turn those off. But this is clumsy, I have to remember the the ticks before I clear them. And if I remove-then-add those ticks. The ticks cannot automatically update any more.
I wonder is there any more straightforward way to do this?
We can still see there is a small border spacing even after removing all ticks. If someone can come up a way to remove that too. It will be fantastic.
I would also like to keep the title if there is one. Thus the hard-coded ax.set_position([0,0,1,x]) is not very good for this usage. Surely we can still try to get the top spacing when there is a title, but if someone can provide a more direct/simple way to handle this, it will be preferred.
Example code:
def demo_tight_layout(w=10, h=6, axisoff=False, removeticks=False):
fig,ax = plt.subplots()
fig.set_facecolor((0.8, 0.8, 0.8))
rect = patches.Rectangle((-w/2, -h/2), w, h, color='#00ffff', alpha=0.5)
ax.add_patch(rect)
ax.plot([-w/2,w/2], [-h/2,h/2])
ax.plot([-w/2,w/2], [h/2,-h/2])
ax.set_ylabel("ylabel")
ax.margins(0)
_texts = []
if axisoff:
ax.set_axis_off()
_texts.append("axisoff")
if removeticks:
ax.set_xticks([])
ax.set_yticks([])
ax.set_ylabel("")
_texts.append("removeticks")
fig.text(0.5, 0.6, " ".join(_texts))
fig.tight_layout(pad=0)
plt.show()
return fig, ax, text

Answer 1

You may adjust the subplot parameters depending on whether you turned the axis off or not.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import patches
def demo_tight_layout(w=10, h=6, axisoff=False):
fig,ax = plt.subplots()
fig.set_facecolor((0.8, 0.8, 0.8))
rect = patches.Rectangle((-w/2, -h/2), w, h, color='#00ffff', alpha=0.5)
ax.add_patch(rect)
ax.plot([-w/2,w/2], [-h/2,h/2])
ax.plot([-w/2,w/2], [h/2,-h/2])
ax.set_ylabel("ylabel")
ax.margins(0)
_texts = []
fig.tight_layout()
if axisoff:
ax.set_axis_off()
_texts.append("axisoff")
params = dict(bottom=0, left=0, right=1)
if ax.get_title() == "":
params.update(top=1)
fig.subplots_adjust(**params)
fig.text(0.5, 0.6, " ".join(_texts))
plt.show()
Now demo_tight_layout(axisoff=True) produces
and demo_tight_layout(axisoff=False) produces

Answer 2

You need to set the axes position to fill the figure. If you create your figure and plot with
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca()
ax.plot(some_x_data, some_y_data)
you need to add the following line to fill the figure with the axes:
ax.set_position([0, 0, 1, 1], which='both')
This sets the axes location relative to the figure size in the following way:
[left, bottom, width, height]
So to completely fill the figure use [0, 0, 1, 1] as shown above.
So taking your code, it should look like this (using fill_figure bool to check):
def demo_tight_layout(w=10, h=6, axisoff=False, removeticks=False, fill_figure=False):
fig,ax = plt.subplots()
fig.set_facecolor((0.8, 0.8, 0.8))
rect = patches.Rectangle((-w/2, -h/2), w, h, color='#00ffff', alpha=0.5)
ax.add_patch(rect)
ax.plot([-w/2,w/2], [-h/2,h/2])
ax.plot([-w/2,w/2], [h/2,-h/2])
ax.set_ylabel("ylabel")
ax.margins(0)
_texts = []
if axisoff:
ax.set_axis_off()
_texts.append("axisoff")
if removeticks:
ax.set_xticks([])
ax.set_yticks([])
ax.set_ylabel("")
_texts.append("removeticks")
fig.text(0.5, 0.6, " ".join(_texts))
fig.tight_layout(pad=0)
if fill_figure:
ax.set_position([0, 0, 1, 1], which='both')
plt.show()
return fig, ax, text
ax.set_position needs to be after fig.tight_layout.
If a figure title is needed, there is no direct way to do it. This unluckily can't be avoided. You need to adapt the height parameters manually so that the title fits in the figure, for example with:
ax.set_position([0, 0, 1, .9], which='both')