title: matplotlib xticks labels overlap
body: <p>I am not able to get nicer spaces between the xticks with the following code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import random
  import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  
  coverages = [random.randint(1,10)*2] * 100
  contig_names = ['AAB0008r'] * len(coverages)
  fig = plt.figure()
  fig.clf()
  ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
  
  ax.yaxis.grid(True, linestyle='-', which='major', color='grey', alpha=0.5)
  
  ind = range(len(coverages))
  rects = ax.bar(ind, coverages, width=0.2, align='center', color='thistle')
  ax.set_xticks(ind)
  ax.set_xticklabels(contig_names)
  #function to auto-rotate the x axis labels
  fig.autofmt_xdate()
  
  plt.show()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How to get more space between the xticks so they do not look like overlapped anymore?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you in advance.</p>