Efficiently Cache And Restore Matplotlib Axes Parameters After Moving Spines

My Problem I'm having trouble maintaining formatting and modifications applied to a matplotlib Axes object after offsetting the spines. An example Consider the following simplifie

Solution 1:

I modified you code, and it can product the same ticks now.

%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.artist import ArtistInspector

def funky_formatting(ax):
    ax.set_xticks([0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9])
    ax.set_xticklabels(list('abcde'), rotation=60)
    ax.set_yticks([0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 0.8])
    ax.set_yticklabels(list('ABCD'), rotation=35)
    ax.tick_params(axis='both', labelsize=18, labelcolor='r')
    ax.set_ylabel('r$y_{\mathrm{ii}}$ test', color='b', fontweight='extra bold', fontsize=20)
    ax.set_xlabel('r$y_{\mathrm{ii}}$ test', color='r', fontweight='light', fontsize=16)

def try_update(artist, p):
    for k,v in p.iteritems():
        try:
            artist.update({k:v})
        except:
            pass    

def offset_spines(ax):
    for spine in ax.spines.values():
        paxis = spine.axis.properties()
        ptick = [label.properties() for label in spine.axis.get_ticklabels()]
        spine.set_position(('outward', 10))
        try_update(spine.axis, paxis)
        for label, p in zip(spine.axis.get_ticklabels(), ptick):
            p.pop("transform")
            try_update(label, p)

# create two axes
fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrows=2)

# format both axes the same way:
for ax in axes:
    funky_formatting(ax)

# offset the spines of only the top subplot
offset_spines(axes[0])

fig.tight_layout()

Here is the output: