Yannick Copin wrote: > Hi, > > running the simple test code: > > from pylab import * > X, Y = meshgrid(linspace(-3,3,11),linspace(-3,3,11)) > Z = randn(*X.shape) > lev = linspace(Z.min(),Z.max(),11)[1:-1] > contourf(X,Y,Z, lev, extend='both') > contour(X,Y,Z, lev, colors='k') > show() > > you will probably notice that the 'contourf' contours are not always > exactly the sames as the 'contour' contours. Why is it so? Don't contour > and contourf use the same contour constructor?
The same overall routine is used for contour as for contourf, but the contour tracing operation is not identical. Tracing a filled contour is much more complicated--that is probably why it is so hard to find filled contour routines. I suspect that whoever wrote the original code we are using wrote the line contour version first, then had to add quite a bit of logic and code to get it to make filled contours. Now, you may be wondering why we can't simply use the boundary of the filled regions for the lines as well, to guarantee they are the same. The reason is that filled contour boundaries include cuts connecting inner and outer contours, and also inner boundaries (edges of masked regions--except when affected by a bug) and the outer boundaries of the domain). It might be possible to simply exclude those line segments from the line contours, but it is not clear to me that the effort would be well-spent. I think that the differences illustrated in your example will occur almost entirely in pathologically ambiguous cases, but it is also possible that they reflect actual bugs or shortcomings of the algorithms used. Understanding the logic and tracing the code path in the present cntr.c is difficult; I have tried but failed to figure out and correct the interior masked region bug in contourf. If a better core contour routine with a suitable license could be found and substituted for the present one, that would be very nice. I have searched many times without turning anything up. Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-users mailing list Matplotlib-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-users
