A: 

This might be a little late but see if something like this would help:

http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/axes%5Fgrid/simple%5Faxisline4.html

Casey  2009-08-25 20:52:38
thanks! apparently this is new in matplotlib 0.99. For me, the easiest/cleanest way to install that was to create a new python install (w/ numpy) in a new prefix.
BlackShift  2009-08-28 11:40:52

related questions

Matlab: How to obtain all the axes handles in a figure handle?
Put text into non-active Axes in MATLAB
Add legend outside of axes without rescaling in MATLAB
XSLT Filtering and indices on node set
Is there a way to remove a single plot from existing axes?
python/matplotlib - parasite twin axis scaling
How can I link axes of imshow plots for zooming and panning?
How do I edit the axes of an image in MATLAB to reverse the direction?
How can I change the tick marks scale in MATLAB?
XPath element which contains an attribute and whose parent's parent contains another attribute
Matplotlib: draw grid lines behind other graph elements
tail read a growing dynamic file and extract two columns and then print a graph.
Sharing contour plot attributes between subplots
How to show x and y axes in a MATLAB graph?
Matplotlib coord. sys origin to top left
Resize a figure automatically in matplotlib
Displaying X and y axis in pylab
How to scale matplotlib subplot heights individually
find length of sequences of identical values in a numpy array
Python plotting libraries
Is there a way to reduce scipy/numpy precision to reduce memory consumption ?
Scaling the y-axis with matplotlib in python
Using SQL Server 2005's XQuery select all nodes with a specific attribute value, or with that attribute missing.