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>>>>> "Kilian" == Kilian Hagemann <hag...@eg...> writes:
 Kilian> Oh, and please bear with me, this is the first time I've
 Kilian> contributed a meaningful patch to an open source project.
Are you aware of Figure.legend, which is designed to do what you
describe (place a legend outside the axes). See also
examples/figlegend_demo.py. I don't think your patch made it through
(at least I couldn't read it) but if there are extra features you need
(like auto-resizing the axes) I think these will be best placed in
Figure.legend.
 http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/matplotlib.figure.html#Figure-legend
Thanks!
JDH

Hi there,
I recently discovered matplotlib after there were some things that good old 
gnuplot couldn't do, and quickly came to some of matplotlib's limitations. 
But since it's written in python which is my favorite language :-) I hacked 
together the attached patch.
It basically implements legend placement outside right of the axes. This means 
three new options for the loc parameter in Legend's constructor: 'upper 
outside right', 'center outside right' and 'lower outside right', 
corresponding to codes 11-13. I didn't bother to have legends left, below or 
above the plot.
One problem that I immediately came across was fitting the legend next to the 
subplot. I thus made the legend resize the axes by default so that it fits 
neatly next to it. This necessitates a small change in the drawing algorithm 
in the Axes class as the axes need to be resized before they're drawn, and 
the legend must be drawn *after* the axes. The whole thing works pretty well 
in what I've tested so far, but can be turned off by using resize_axes=False, 
a new keyword for Legend's constructor.
Further, the 'best' location now checks all possible inside locations and if 
it doesn't find a perfect spot puts it 'center outside right' instead of at 
the least problematic place.
Finally I cleaned up some redundant code in legend.py and two minor bugs, one 
related to error checking of the loc parameter, the other to near-perfect 
legend positioning in case it's frame uses a non-standard linewidth.
Bugs and caveats: Don't try to resize the axes when resize_axes is on. In my 
scripts this seems to make no difference, but in gtk's interactive resizing 
function this gives unexpected results.
Any chance of incorporating this enhancement in the next release?
Oh, and please bear with me, this is the first time I've contributed a 
meaningful patch to an open source project.
Regards,
-- 
Kilian Hagemann
Climate Systems Analysis Group
University of Cape Town
Republic of South Africa
Tel(w): ++27 21 650 2748