matplotlib - Keyboard shortcuts to pan left/right/up/down - event-handling

Question

In matplotlib, is there a keyboard alternative to dragging a plot with the left mouse click for panning in the four directions?
Reason is, apart from the fact that it seems like an obvious keyboard shortcut, I'm printing the xdata value every time I left-click. It would be useful to drag without clicking the plot.
Otherwise, is there a way to connect to a double-click event? That way I could print my value only on that event. For the moment I have solved by printing on right-click.

Answer 1

def on_dbl_click(event):
if event.dblclick:
print event.x, event.y
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1)
fig.canvas.mpl_connect('button_press_event', on_dbl_click)
You just need to test if the event has dblcilck set (doc)

Answer 2

This is how I added a "ctrl+c" shortcut to a matplotlib figure. Any figure created with the function below will copy a picture of the figure to the clipboard through "ctrl+c".
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from PyQt4 import QtGui
def figure(num = None):
"""Creates and returns a matplotlib figure and adds a 'ctrl+c' shortcut that copies figure to clipboard"""
def on_ctrl_c_click(event):
if event.key == 'ctrl+c' or event.key == 'ctrl+C':
QtGui.QApplication.clipboard().setPixmap(QtGui.QPixmap.grabWidget(fig.canvas))
fig = plt.figure(num)
fig.canvas.mpl_connect('key_press_event', on_ctrl_c_click)
return fig

Answer 3

Here's a simple function to allow panning in all 4 directions using the arrow keys.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
def pan_nav(event):
ax_tmp = plt.gca()
if event.key == 'left':
lims = ax_tmp.get_xlim()
adjust = (lims[1] - lims[0]) * 0.9
ax_tmp.set_xlim((lims[0] - adjust, lims[1] - adjust))
plt.draw()
elif event.key == 'right':
lims = ax_tmp.get_xlim()
adjust = (lims[1] - lims[0]) * 0.9
ax_tmp.set_xlim((lims[0] + adjust, lims[1] + adjust))
plt.draw()
elif event.key == 'down':
lims = ax_tmp.get_ylim()
adjust = (lims[1] - lims[0]) * 0.9
ax_tmp.set_ylim((lims[0] - adjust, lims[1] - adjust))
plt.draw()
elif event.key == 'up':
lims = ax_tmp.get_ylim()
adjust = (lims[1] - lims[0]) * 0.9
ax_tmp.set_ylim((lims[0] + adjust, lims[1] + adjust))
plt.draw()
fig = plt.figure()
fig.canvas.mpl_connect('key_press_event', pan_nav)
plt.plot(1, 1, 'ko') # plot something