The build errors look un-related to this (and related to the six conversion or locale issues).

One of these days I will get a PR through without documentation issues....

I thought the values shown in the template were supposed to be the default value.

In terms of major changes, I think it would be better to move the comment strings to rcsetup.py and then auto-generate the template.

This doesn't automatically merge, would you mind rebasing.

I'd also like to see a test. Something as simple as mocking ScalarFormatter (untested):

for use_offset in [True, False]:
    with mock.patch('matplotlib.ticker.ScalarFormatter.set_useOffset') as set_useOffset:
        with matplotlib.rcContext({'axes.formatter.useoffset': use_offset}):
            plt.plot(range(10))
    set_useOffset.assert_called_with(use_offset)

rebased, the conflicts were in api_changes.

I will try to get to the tests this weekend. I know nothing about mock so I suspect it will take me a while to sort out how that works.

Is this test sufficient?

Is this test sufficient?

Yes indeed. 👍

Could you add 'mock' to the test dependencies (at https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/blob/master/setupext.py#L651) and squash your commits, and I'll merge.

I am confused by adding mock, I don't actually use it in the test.

@pelson Can you take another look at this?

@pelson Sorry to be a pest. Is there anything else that needs to be done on this?

rebased again

@efiring or @pelson Can one of you push the big green button on this PR so we can close #2576 and #461 ?

Hi. What about datetime formatter offset?

@talhum would you consider opening a new feature request for this?