title: How to reduce horizontal subplot spacing when tight_layout fails?
body: <p>I'm trying to create a single figure in matplotlib with several subplots of different row and column spans, using subplot2grid.</p>
  
  <p>For example, the following code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  import numpy as n
  
  fig = plt.figure()
  ax1 = plt.subplot2grid((2, 5), (0, 0), rowspan=2, colspan=2)
  ax2 = plt.subplot2grid((2, 5), (0, 2))
  ax2_2 = plt.subplot2grid((2, 5), (0, 3))
  ax2_3 = plt.subplot2grid((2, 5), (0, 4))
  ax3 = plt.subplot2grid((2, 5), (1, 2), colspan=3) #, sharex=ax2)
  
  xs = n.linspace(0, 2*n.pi, 100)
  ax1.plot(xs, n.sin(xs))
  ax2.plot(xs, n.cos(xs))
  ax2_2.plot(xs, n.tan(xs))
  ax2_3.plot(xs, n.sin(xs))
  ax3.plot(xs, n.cos(xs))
  
  
  ax2.set_xticklabels([])
  ax2.set_yticklabels([])
  ax2_2.set_xticklabels([])
  ax2_2.set_yticklabels([])
  ax2_3.set_xticklabels([])
  ax2_3.set_yticklabels([])
  
  # This comes from a separate attempt to make the ticks invisible, but seems to make no change.
  plt.setp(ax2.get_xticklabels(), visible=False)
  plt.setp(ax2.get_yticklabels(), visible=False)
  plt.setp(ax2_2.get_xticklabels(), visible=False)
  plt.setp(ax2_2.get_yticklabels(), visible=False)
  plt.setp(ax2_3.get_xticklabels(), visible=False)
  plt.setp(ax2_3.get_yticklabels(), visible=False)
  
  
  fig.set_size_inches(6.5, 2.85)
  fig.tight_layout()
  # I tried several things here - subplots_adjust improves the vertical spacing a little, but not the horizontal.
  fig.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.1)
  
  fig.savefig('test.png', dpi=100)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This makes a figure like:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/CdxTb.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>The problem is the 3 single-cell subplots in the top right, each of which has only about 70% of the width that would fit. tight_layout otherwise takes care of the spacing nicely, but I can't work out why this space isn't filled, or how to work around it.</p>
  
  <p>So...does anyone know how to do this, making the subplots take the full available width?</p>