xlims and xlabel not working in plotlyjs

[leoll2]

I've already documented the issue here.

Basically, when using plotlyjs as backend to draw 3d graphs, the xlims and xlabel attributes don't work, although they're supported according to this list.
On the other side, 2d plots work fine.
Here's a picture:

And here's the code to reproduce the issue:

`using Plots

plotlyjs()

x = [2,3,4,1]
y = [8,3,1,2]
z = [4,5,3,4]

p1 = plot(x, y, seriestype=:scatter,
title="Hello!", xlabel = "xlabel", ylabel="ylabel",
xlims=(0.0, 6.5), ylims=(0.0,9.0))
p2 = plot(x, y, z, seriestype=:scatter,
title="Hello!", xlabel="xlabel",ylabel="ylabel", zlabel="zlabel",
xlims=(0.0, 80.5), ylims=(0.0,9.0), zlims=(0.0,5.0))

`

Finally, I'd like to stress the usefulness of this feature and why it'd be important for me (and others) to fix as soon as possible. I use graphs to dynamically represent an evolving data set (scatter points). Without xlims, it's very hard for me to visualize the fluctuations in the data, since the axes keep re-scaling according to the extremal values in the set.

[juliohm]

Not only with plotlyjs, the xlabel attribute is not working with plot recipes in GR either:

using Variography

foo = EmpiricalVariogram(eye(3), ones(3))

plot(foo, xlab="foo") # xlab is ignored

[BoundaryValueProblems]

Using scatter in 3D as @leoll2 did, xlabel, ylabel, zlabel work as expected under both pyplot and gr backends, but not under plotlyjs backend at this point. It's quite strange though. It worked in January 2018. I have a script/function to do some 3D scatter plot, and I have a pdf file generated in January 2018, where I could see the plotlyjs backend did correct axis labeling. Now, the same script does not render xlabel, ylabel, zlabel as I specified. Instead, it shows simply, x, y, z on the plot. I'm currently using PlotlyJS.jl version 0.10.2 (master) with Plots.jl 0.17.0+ (master).

[mkborregaard]

Hm, it looks as if the axis title attribute is being correctly set - is there a change to how this is done in plotlyjs? The 3d examples http://spencerlyon.com/PlotlyJS.jl/examples/3d/ only show x, y and z on the axes.

[BoundaryValueProblems]

@mkborregaard , I communicated with @sglyon about this problem, and he gave me the following answer at JuliaPlots/PlotlyJS.jl#189 , i.e.,

After looking at the json generated by Plots.jl , I think the problem is that Plots is setting properties on layout.scene.(x|y|z)axis1 instead of layout.scene.(x|y|z)axis -- the addition of the 1 is messing things up.

Could you or @daschw check if removing 1 from the above is possible and solves this problem? I could not nail which file in Plots.jl sets this. Thanks a lot!

[mkborregaard]

That happens here: https://github.com/JuliaPlots/Plots.jl/blob/master/src/backends/plotly.jl#L361-L363
It looks like it happens on purpose, for when there are more than one subplot. Did the plotly specification change?

[mkborregaard]

This is apparently due to a change in the plotlyjs specification, where it's only called "xaxis" IF there's only one subplot. Plots' series don't know about subplots, but one solution could be to just always have both keys in there.
Easy PR I guess.

[daschw]

What's the problem with checking for length(plt.subplots) > 1?

[mkborregaard]

I guess you could do that, and then revisit if used in p = scatter(randn(10)); p2 = scatter(randn(20)); plot(p1, p2)?

[daschw]

Ah, ok, will the axes not be updated with plot(p1, p2)?

[mkborregaard]

I didn't think so but I haven't checked. That would make it easy