I would like to manually adjust the distance between the x ticks in my plot. I am changing the value in xtick distance without any visible effect. Since my labels are quite large, I would like to spread the x axis on most of the page width, something like 0.75\textwidth.
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[!htbp]
\centering
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[axis y line=middle,
axis x line=bottom,
x axis line style={dashed},
xlabel={Time steps},
ylabel={State and input variables},
xtick distance=30,
xtick={-4,-2,0,2,4,6},
xticklabels={$k-2$,$k-1$,$k$,$k+1$,$k+2$,$k+3$},
ytick={},
yticklabels={},
xmin=-8,
xmax=8,
ymin=0,
ymax=1.1]
\addplot[const plot,no marks] coordinates {(0,0) (1,0.25) (2,0.4) (3,0.5) (4,1) (4.49,1)};
\addplot[draw=blue,const plot,no marks] coordinates {(-4,0.15) (-2,0.05) (0,0.2) (2,0.45) (4,0.7) (6,1)};
\addplot[const plot,dashed,no marks] coordinates {(-8,1) (8,1)};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{figure}
\end{document}
Any ideas ?
Thanks in advance

xtick distancedoesn't have any effect when you also statextick. Also it is strange that for every DeltaX of 2 you only increase the corresponding labels by +1. Is that intended? – Stefan Pinnow Sep 17 '18 at 10:00x=7.5mmthat scales the x axis. – RockyRock Sep 17 '18 at 10:05