Tufte style axes in 3D

Here you can sdee Tufte style axes in 3D. The axis affect is achieved by shifting axes, ticks and labels.

The command \pgfplotspointouternormalvectorofticklabelaxis{x} is a shortcut for \pgfplotspointouternormalvectorofaxis{\pgfplotsticklabelaxisspec{x}}. The documentation for \pgfplotspointouternormalvectorofticklabelaxis is missing in the reference manual.

Note that this shift is incompatible with the grid lines (by construction!). To see this, try to add grid=major and you will see the the descriptions would be slightly off.

This example was written by Christian Feuersänger on TeX.SE.

Edit and compile if you like:
\documentclass[border=5pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\def\axisdefaultwidth{360pt}
\pgfplotsset{
every axis/.append style = {thick},tick style = {thick,black},
%
% #1 = x, y, or z
% #2 = the shift value
/tikz/normal shift/.code 2 args = {%
\pgftransformshift{%
\pgfpointscale{#2}{\pgfplotspointouternormalvectorofticklabelaxis{#1}}%
}%
},%
%
range3frame/.style = {
tick align        = outside,
scaled ticks      = false,
enlargelimits     = false,
ticklabel shift   = {10pt},
axis lines*       = left,
line cap          = round,
clip              = false,
xtick style       = {normal shift={x}{10pt}},
ytick style       = {normal shift={y}{10pt}},
ztick style       = {normal shift={z}{10pt}},
x axis line style = {normal shift={x}{10pt}},
y axis line style = {normal shift={y}{10pt}},
z axis line style = {normal shift={z}{10pt}},
}
}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[range3frame, view={55}{45}]
\end{document}