In reference to the configuration package idea... I (and the users that I support) use matplotlib both as a standalone plotter for generating lots of plots, as an interactive plotter, and as an embedded plot in an application environment. In all of these instances we have found the '.matplotlibrc' mechanism to be severely lacking in control of plot formats. Users will be generating series of plots that are going to be embedded into documents and therefore want a uniform look and feel to those plots. Later they want to generate some plots for use on an overhead projector (which has a much different DPI). Another time they are interactively plotting on their workstation and still again doing all this in an embedded form as well.
The solution we have come up with, although a little bit of a hack, is a configuration/formatter class, where instances are used to manage the formatting of the plots. Each instance can represent a specific set of configurations controlling everything from font properties to background color. The difference here is that having global defaults is all fine and dandy, but sometimes just setting a global default is not enough and controlling the setting as an encapsulated entity that can be passed around and selected at will can be quite useful. Just my $0.02 --James Evans > On 10/28/10 12:46 PM, Russell E. Owen wrote: > > > It's an interesting question. You can't call a matplotlib function to > do > > it because it has to happen before matplotlib is loaded. I suppose > there > > could be a configuration package to perform the operation. > > I actually like that idea. It could even do a bit more, like have the > matplotlib.use() function, and who knows how many others. > > I've never liked the .matplotlibrc approach -- it makes great sense for > an interactive environment, but not so much for embedding MPL in other > apps, for all the reason's Russell has laid out. > > If there was a mplconfig module that you could import first, and have > functions in there where you could set all the defaults the way tyou > like them, it would be easier to make self-contained MPL apps that > didn't step on each-others toes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nokia and AT&T present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps & games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
