"pyplot.plot_date()" is not changing the line colors using "color_cycle"

[saullocastro]

Please, check this question in Stackoverflow:
http://stackoverflow.com/q/17250392/832621
which motivated this bug report.

The OP identified that when trying to plot using plot_date() the colors are not changed accordingly to the color_cycle specified. Actually they are not changing at all.
With plot() it works perfectly.
I tried to change the colors from plot_date() using:
plt.rc('axes', **{'color_cycle':['r', 'g']})
plt.rcParams['axes.color_cycle']=['r','g']
and
setting the matplotlibrc file to the local folder with axes.color_cycle : r, g.

they all did not work.

thank you very much and congratulations for the great package which Matploblib already is!
Saullo Castro

[tacaswell]

This isn't a bug, but a design choice. There is a default argument in both plt.date_plot and axes.date_plot that sets the format to bo.

See https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/blob/master/lib/matplotlib/axes.py#L4145 and https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/blob/master/lib/matplotlib/pyplot.py#L2997

[saullocastro]

Thank you all for the responses... It is ok that data_plot() sets the format to bo but why the user cannot change it?

[WeatherGod]

Probably wasn't a conscious design choice. I move to switch it over to
None, so that the color-cycling mechanism can happen.

[saullocastro]

Are you going to switch it to None for the next version? That would be great! In matplotlib 1.2.1 is there a way to switch it to None?

[tacaswell]

@saullocastro Call it as

plot_data(..., fmt=None)

[saullocastro]

@tacaswell Thank you! For me it worked doing plot_date(..., fmt='')

[omkarkulkarni]

fmt is for the shape, what can we use for size.
I tried with m or ms or s but all throw error.