Gael Varoquaux wrote: > On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 08:39:30AM -0500, John Hunter wrote: > >> Anyone interested? And if so, feel free to suggest topics or weigh in >> on some I listed. >> > > Actually, I have something I would like to discuss, but never really > could pull myself together to do it. I don't have time right now, but I > am still going to jot down the ideas. > > The axes and figure paradigm inherited from matlab works well for simple > things, but when I want to more complex layouts, I actually end up > struggling with calls to axes with numerical parameters to adjust. In > addition, if I have a function that creates a plot with multiple axes, > like the figure on: > http://neuroimaging.scipy.org/site/doc/manual/html/neurospin/activation_map.html > I may want to reuse that function to create more complex figures, > stacking several of these views, with possibly other plots. > > It seems to me having a level of granularity between the figure, and the > axes would help me a lot achieving these goals. I haven't had time to > hash out an API, or even solid concepts. For people who know LaTeX well, > let me draw an analogy: the figure is the page, the axis is the > character, what we are lacking in a 'minipage'. I would like a container > that can be stacked into a figure, and that can either hold axes, or > similar containers. That way, I could specify subplot, or axis relative > to this container, rather than relative to the whole figure, and it makes > it really easy for me to insert figures in larger figures. > > One possible API would be 'subfigure', which would have a signature > similar to 'axes', but of course things would need to be thought a bit > more in detail: do we want clf to erase the figure and not the subfigure? > I believe so. Do we want subplot to divide the subfigure, rather than the > figure? I believe so too. How do we go back to full figure without > erasing the subfigures it contains? I think subfigure(None) might work. > How do I select a subfigure I already created? Maybe by passing it a > subfigure instance, like the way axes work. > > Also, Chaco has the notion of containers, in which you can stack plots or > other containers. They have an additional feature which is that they > enable you to stack plot (these would be axes, in matplotlib terms) and > do an automatic layout of the plots. Very handy to have an extensible > canvas to display information on. Some sparse documentation: > http://code.enthought.com/projects/chaco/docs/html/api/containers.html > > I have been trying to find time to think about this for more than a year, > and haven't. This is why I am sending unfinished thoughts. I do believe > more thinking has to be done, and the subfigure proposition may not hold > at all. Also, I fear I do not have time to implement this. > I also have some not very fleshed out thoughts: my main feeling about MPL is that there's just too much layout happening to keep using the non-systematic delegation/notification "system" currently in place while allowing the devs to maintain their sanity and day jobs. I don't mean to disparage MPL -- it is quite a fantastic piece of code -- but there is a lack of abstraction of layout hierarchies and layout dependencies that makes development difficult.
Therefore, I'd suggest that before adding on too many more nice features, we revisit the core layout and delegation system -- in the end it will make everything much easier. So, perhaps a useful thing would be for as many MPL devs as possible to sit together and discuss how we could do this. My thought right now would be to investigate the use of traits to codify the layout abstractions. Any effort like this will also obviously benefit from having an extensive test suite. I think all that's needed to get the tests at http://mpl-buildbot.code.astraw.com/waterfall to pass is that someone checks in new images made with the current MPL. I'd like to do this, but I'm really short on time at the moment. So, please, someone -- beat me to it -- it won't be hard! Those are my 2 cents. Hope to see you all at SciPy 2009! -Andrew ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
