Just to keep my notes in one place... from Matplotlib's "Introduction" page
is prose that I assume was written by John:
For years, I used to use MATLAB exclusively for data analysis and
visualization. MATLAB excels at making nice looking plots easy. When I
began working with EEG data, I found that I needed to write applications to
interact with my data, and developed and EEG analysis application in
MATLAB. As the application grew in complexity, interacting with databases,
http servers, manipulating complex data structures, I began to strain
against the limitations of MATLAB as a programming language, and decided to
start over in Python. Python more than makes up for all of MATLAB’s
deficiencies as a programming language, but I was having difficulty finding
a 2D plotting package (for 3D VTK <http://www.vtk.org/> more than exceeds
all of my needs).
When I went searching for a Python plotting package, I had several
requirements:
- Plots should look great - publication quality. One important
requirement for me is that the text looks good (antialiased, etc.)
- Postscript output for inclusion with TeX documents
- Embeddable in a graphical user interface for application development
- Code should be easy enough that I can understand it and extend it
- Making plots should be easy
Finding no package that suited me just right, I did what any
self-respecting Python programmer would do: rolled up my sleeves and dived
in. Not having any real experience with computer graphics, I decided to
emulate MATLAB’s plotting capabilities because that is something MATLAB
does very well. This had the added advantage that many people have a lot of
MATLAB experience, and thus they can quickly get up to steam plotting in
python. From a developer’s perspective, having a fixed user interface (the
pylab interface) has been very useful, because the guts of the code base
can be redesigned without affecting user code.
On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 11:51 PM, Benjamin Root <ben.r...@ou.edu> wrote:
> Fernando,
>
> This information is going to be the preface of my book on using matplotlib
> for making an interactive application (sorry, no IPython, the editor wanted
> to keep the scope tight). So, what I am looking for are some of the major
> interactive features (who supplied them, and their reasons/purpose). Also,
> how has interactive matplotlib supported uses "in the wild" such as the
> Mars Phoenix Lander and recently, the ISEE3 reboot project (that abandoned
> satellite that was recently revived by citizen scientists).
>
> Of, course, any insights to John's original needs/use cases in the early
> years would be very valuable as well. I could have sworn he has written
> such missives on the mailing lists, but I can't seem to find them.
>
> Cheers!
> Ben Root
> On Jul 30, 2014 11:21 PM, "Fernando Perez" <fperez....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Ben,
>>
>> if by interactive plotting you refer to using it interactively via
>> ipython and other such systems, there's a good part of that history that is
>> spread somewhere between the early mpl and ipython archives AND John's and
>> my personal inboxes.
>>
>> A good chunk of that (not all, mind you, since many others contributed)
>> happened with John and I working on it, and sadly he's not with us and I
>> had a loss of my early email (anything older than 2005) when I left the
>> University of Colorado.
>>
>> I'd be happy to answer some questions if you have them, to the best of my
>> memory. Probably quicker over skype/phone, ping me directly (at my Berkeley
>> address) if you want.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> f
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 7:20 PM, Benjamin Root <ben.r...@ou.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I am trying to put together notes for a writeup on a short history of
>>> matplotlib (in particular, its uses for interactive plotting). I have John
>>> Hunter's SciPy 2012 Keynote, which helps, but I was hoping for some other
>>> sources.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, searching for "matplotlib" and "history" gets me lots of
>>> results on our trials and tribulations with version control...
>>>
>>> Anybody have anything bookmarked?
>>>
>>> Cheers!
>>> Ben Root
>>>
>>> P.S. - Yes... this is for a book. Stay tuned!
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Fernando Perez (@fperez_org; http://fperez.org)
>> fperez.net-at-gmail: mailing lists only (I ignore this when swamped!)
>> fernando.perez-at-berkeley: contact me here for any direct mail
>>
>
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