Plots.jl: Zooming in PlotlyJS does not update the tick marks

[cstjean]

When I zoom in a PlotlyJS.jl plot in a notebook, the axis gains new tick marks (1.5, 1.6, etc.)

using PlotlyJS
plot(scatter(;x=1:4, y=[10, 15, 13, 17]))

This does not happen if I use Plots.jl to do the same

using Plots
plotlyjs()
plot(1:4, [10, 15, 13, 17])

Zooming further, the x axis gets completely blank.

[apalugniok]

This is because Plots calculates its own ticks based on the extent of the data and passes them to Plotly. So it's as if you manually set the ticks in the first example, I guess that's why they don't change upon zooming. I think this would mean that :auto ticks would have to be left to Plotly rather than done by Plots but that would possibly break certain series types like heatmaps which depend heavily on the ticks being calculated by Plots.

[cstjean]

If you have any work-around to suggest in the meantime, I would take it. Is there any way I can Plots not to provide tick marks?

[apalugniok]

Unfortunately, I don't think there is an easy work-around for this Plots behavior 😟... I can't think of any ways of currently stopping Plots from providing ticks.

[apalugniok]

Maybe adding something along the lines of a :native option for ticks would be a way to solve this. For backends that can calculate their own ticks it would stop Plots' ticks from being passed and for the other backends it would act like :auto.

[mkborregaard]

I see how that would be cool, but just a quick estimate it might be a little involved to implement in terms of bypassing Plots' axis and ticks code.

[apalugniok]

I think I have a quick proof of concept so I'll open a PR 😄

[cstjean]

Awesome, thank you for all your work @apalugniok !

[mkborregaard]

Yes, that's a great functionality to have added, really nice work.