I've only been able to plot data with both symbols and lines by issuing two plot commands, one for markers and one for lines. That's perfectly fine, but it creates a problem when I try to create a legend for it. For some reason, the legend command by default alternates between using symbols and lines, grabbing displaying the symbol from the first plot command for the first series, then displaying a line type from the second plot for the next series, etc. This behavior is a bit strange, and in fact unacceptable when the same line type is used for each series.
For instance, assume I plot four series using these markers: square, circle, x and +, and then plotted a solid line to connect each series of markers. The legend would describe the four series using: square, solid line, x, solid line. Clearly, that wont' work. I've been able get around this previously by issuing the legend command right after the first plot command, before the second plot command. In my current usage, though, I'm looping through a number of files that are being plotted on the same graph. In this case, the fact that I've plotted lines in the preceding loop causes the legend command to revert to this alternating behavior. Is there some way to explicitly define the symbols used by the legend command? Or some way to plot lines with markers in the same command which would presumably avoid this problem? In general, plotting with matplotlib is so easy and intuitive that I'm surprised to be having so much difficulty doing something as simple as this. I'm sure I must be missing something obvious. The documentation of the legend command was unenlightening. Thanks, J.S. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
