Change the width of the Basic Bar Chart
<p>I create a Bar Chart with matplotlib with : </p>

<pre><code>import matplotlib.pyplot as plt; plt.rcdefaults()
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

objects = ('ETA_PRG_P2REF_RM', 'ETA_PRG_VDES_RM', 'ETA_PRG_P3REF_RM', 'Python', 'C++', 'Java', 'Perl', 'Scala', 'Lisp')
y_pos = np.arange(len(objects))
performance = [220010, 234690, 235100, 21220, 83410, 119770, 210990, 190430, 888994]
plt.bar(y_pos, performance, align='center', alpha=0.5)
plt.xticks(y_pos, objects)
plt.ylabel('Usage')
plt.title('Programming language usage')
plt.show() 
</code></pre>

<p>Look at the attached Image <a href="http://i.stack.imgur.com/MAUfd.png" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://i.stack.imgur.com/MAUfd.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>But, As you can remark the width of the plot is smal, the name of object are not clear.
Can you suggest me how to resolve this problem?</p>

<p>Thank you</p>

<p>You can add tick labels with a rotation:</p>

<pre><code>pyplot.xticks(y_pos, objects, rotation=70)
</code></pre>

<p>In addition to an angle in degrees, you can specify a string:</p>

<pre><code>pyplot.xticks(y_pos, objects, rotation='vertical')
</code></pre>

<p>You may also want to specify a horizontal alignment, especially is using an angle like 40. The default is to use the center, which makes the labels look weird:</p>

<pre><code>pyplot.xticks(y_pos, objects, rotation=40, ha='right')
</code></pre>

<p>See the <a href="http://matplotlib.org/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot.xticks" rel="nofollow">docs</a> for a full list of options.</p>

python matplotlib bar-chart