As reported by @wuweihust on gitter, string categorical tick labels don't show up in the preview window of an interactive plot:

%matplotlibnotebookimportmatplotlib.pyplotaspltfig,ax=plt.subplots()ax.plot(['hi','bye','why'], [3,1,2])

On gitter,@jklymak recommend implementing theformat_data_short method for theStrCategoryFormatter.

The implementation should probably be something like thedefault:

defformat_data(self,value):returnself.__call__(value)defformat_data_short(self,value):returnself.format_data(value)

Which, as an aside, why aren't these called givenStrCategoryFormatter inherits fromFormatter?