MonthlyDates.jl: strange behavior in x-axis with long time series

[VivaldoMendes]

I have a long time series comprising 238 quarterly observations (1960.Q1-2019.Q2)). For teaching, I want to plot them using interactivity with Plots, plotlyjs(), Dates.jl and MontlyDates.jl. However, I have a problem with the x-axis displaying the correct information, and I would be very grateful if someone could help.

Without interactivity, I would just create a 238-element LinRange{Float64} with the dates using, e.g., Period1=LinRange(1960,2019.25,238), and with a simple piece of code:

plot(
    	Period1, [RealGDP  RealINV  RealCONS],
    	labels = ["GDP" "INV" "CONS"],
	color = [:red :orange :blue],
    	legend = :topleft,
	fg_legend = :transparent,
    	title = "Real GDP, Investment and Consumption: US (1960.Q1--2019.Q2)",
    	titlefontsize = 11,
)

I would get the following figure:

I have a problem with this simple approach because the thousands-separating comma distorts the dates (I would not mind 2000.5, but 2,005.5 looks awkward). So I searched and found the MonthlyDates.jl, which looks nice and easy to use. I define the format according to:

Period2 = QuarterlyDate("1960-Q1"):Quarter(1):QuarterlyDate("2019-Q2")

and the output, by collect(Period2) gives the correct output:

1960-Q1
1960-Q2
1960-Q3
1960-Q4
1961-Q1
1961-Q2
1961-Q3
1961-Q4
1962-Q1
...

A time series can be easily produced by replacing Period1 with Period2 in the code above. The plot looks like this:

There are three problems with this plot that I don't know how to remove:

(i) the chosen dates by default look helpless (why should the first x-axis entry be 1963-Q2?);

(ii) the x-axis only displays the correct dates if we put the cursor right on top of displayed entries (for example, 2000-Q4 looks OK): see figure above.

(iii) If we put the cursor slightly to the left/right of the displayed entries on the x-axis, a string appears that makes no sense (e.g., "8023"); see figure below.

This problem looks like an easy one to solve. I tried many ways but failed. Help will be appreciated.

[matthieugomez]

Fortunately, RecipesBase implemented something recently to work around this kind of issues. Can you write a reproductible example so that I can solve this?

[VivaldoMendes]

Yes, sure. Thanks a lot.

CSV file here

The code is very simple (I use it in Pluto, but I think the interactivity also works in Jupyter, and certainly works in VSCode or Atom):

#packages

using Plots
using DataFrames
using CSV
#using PlutoDataTable
#using LaTeXStrings
using Dates 
using MonthlyDates
plotlyjs()

# reading the data

MyData = CSV.read("Test2_Data.csv", DataFrame)

# using LinRange to create a vector with data entries (not using MonthlyDates.jl)

Period1=LinRange(1960,2019.25,238)

# using MonthlyDates.jl to create QuarterlyDate <: TimeType type

Period2 = QuarterlyDate("1960-Q1"):Quarter(1):QuarterlyDate("2019-Q2")

# Creating variables from the DataFrame

RealGDP = MyData[:, 2]
RealCONS = MyData[:, 3]
RealINV = MyData[:, 4]
RealEXP = MyData[:, 5]
FFR = MyData[:, 6]
U = MyData[:,7]
M2 = MyData[:, 8]

# Plotting with dates created according to MonthlyDates.jl

plot(Period2, [RealGDP  RealINV  RealCONS],
    	labels = ["GDP" "INV" "CONS"],
	color = [:red :orange :blue],
    	legend = :topleft,
	fg_legend = :transparent,
    	title = "Real GDP, Investment and Consumption: US (1960.Q1-2019.Q2)",
    	titlefontsize = 11,
    )