Closed
Description
Setting the margin (ax.margins) to something outside the range between 0 and 1
ax.margins(x=3)
result in an error. This is due to the lines:
if m < 0 or m > 1:
raise ValueError("margin must be in range 0 to 1")
in the axes._base's set_xmargin method.
This limitation seems rather arbitrary to me.
If one comments out the restriction to 0 <= m <= 1, setting ax.margins(3) produces a result as expected, so it does not even seem to have any bad implications
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = np.array([0,0,1,0,1])*1.9+10.466
y = np.array([0,1,1,0,0])*1.9+10.466
x2 = np.array([1,0,0.5,1,1])*1.9+10.466
y2 = np.array([0,1,1.5,1,0])*1.9+10.466
plt.plot(x,y)
plt.plot(x2,y2)
plt.margins(3)
plt.show()
Sure, we can replace the single line plt.margins(3) by
margin=3
xmax = np.max([x.max(),x2.max()])
xmin = np.min([x.min(),x2.min()])
ymax = np.max([y.max(),y2.max()])
ymin = np.min([y.min(),y2.min()])
plt.gca().set_xlim(xmin-(xmax-xmin)*margin, xmax+(xmax-xmin)*margin)
plt.gca().set_ylim(ymin-(ymax-ymin)*margin, ymax+(ymax-ymin)*margin)
but if there isn't really any reason for the restriction, this would be overly complicated.
Therefore I would like to ask if there is a reason for the restriction 0 <= m <= 1, and if not whether we could simply get rid of it.