I've seen error messages like "You need to specify ..." when I try to set the length of the axis, but I've never seen if for the current situation. Never seen the warnings about not enough space for the text although I see them often in other situations even where the graph looks just fine. The only time I see the missing values is when I try to set the origin. I've been concerned about collision between different specifications, so that's why I tried to stay as close as I could to my original setup including multiple graphs on the page. However, as you say we can generate the same error with a single simple graph. Thanks for all the help. More experimenting showed that you were exactly right -- the error about missing values is generated when the printed axis label or values are cut off, by shifting the origin too far to the left or down. No error is generated when the graph area is cut off by shifting too far to the right or up, although you do get a warning about strings extending beyond the device boundary. It would be nice to see the documentation explain this behavior. ... View more