matplotlib-devel Mailing List for matplotlib

sam tygier wrote:
> Eric Firing wrote:
>> Sandro Tosi wrote:
>>> Hi Sam,
>>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 09:35, sam tygier <sam...@ya...> wrote:
>>>> I think this topic has come up before, but i don't think anything has
>>>> resulted from it.
>>>>
>> Correct, because the capability would require a *lot* of work to 
>> implement,
> 
> Would i be right in assuming that it would take roughly the same amount of effort as writing a new backend? ie for each motplotlib action it would need a function to store that action and a function to call that action again.
It is much more than that; it would take a backend to write out the new 
format, and an interpreter to turn that format back into mpl objects or 
API calls.
One of the mpl backends is svg; can you use something like Inkscape to 
make the plot adjustments you are talking about?
Eric
> 
>> and most of us don't see a compelling need; we believe that a 
>> better practice is to structure one's work so that plotting is separated 
>> from data (result) generation in any cases where the latter is highly 
>> time-consuming.
> 
> It might not be essential, but it would offer an additional work flow, that a few people seem to like.
> 
> I think it would be especially useful when it comes to putting plots into papers. I often find that i want to tweak something like the font size or labels. having a modifiable plot format seems the easiest way to achieve that. maybe the could even be some integration into latex so that if you were to resize your plot in your paper, it would be re-rendered with the fonts adjusted.
> 
>>>> I'd like a way for saving a plot from from matplotlib, so that it can be
>>>> re-rendered later, possibly with a different backend, maybe to a different
>>>> size, and maybe with changes to the labels. This would save me having to
>>>> rerun the simulation that generated the plot.
>>>>
>>>> Ideally this would work by having a save_plot() function, that would save
>>>> all state of the current plot into a file. This could then be loaded by a
>>>> program to regenerate that plot.
>>> Can't this be achieved by pickling/unpickling the mpl objects? Didn't
>>> manage to test it, but it should work.
>> No, this has been discussed several times. Quite a bit of work would be 
>> required to make all the extension code compatible with pickling. More 
>> work, more complexity, more difficult code maintenance and testing. 
>> It's not worth it, given the developer resources available for mpl.
> 
> a file format avoids all the issues that pickling causes.
> 
> thanks for all the comments
> 
> sam tygier
> 
> 
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Eric Firing wrote:
> Sandro Tosi wrote:
>> Hi Sam,
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 09:35, sam tygier <sam...@ya...> wrote:
>>> I think this topic has come up before, but i don't think anything has
>>> resulted from it.
>>>
> Correct, because the capability would require a *lot* of work to 
> implement,
Would i be right in assuming that it would take roughly the same amount of effort as writing a new backend? ie for each motplotlib action it would need a function to store that action and a function to call that action again.
> and most of us don't see a compelling need; we believe that a 
> better practice is to structure one's work so that plotting is separated 
> from data (result) generation in any cases where the latter is highly 
> time-consuming.
It might not be essential, but it would offer an additional work flow, that a few people seem to like.
I think it would be especially useful when it comes to putting plots into papers. I often find that i want to tweak something like the font size or labels. having a modifiable plot format seems the easiest way to achieve that. maybe the could even be some integration into latex so that if you were to resize your plot in your paper, it would be re-rendered with the fonts adjusted.
>>> I'd like a way for saving a plot from from matplotlib, so that it can be
>>> re-rendered later, possibly with a different backend, maybe to a different
>>> size, and maybe with changes to the labels. This would save me having to
>>> rerun the simulation that generated the plot.
>>>
>>> Ideally this would work by having a save_plot() function, that would save
>>> all state of the current plot into a file. This could then be loaded by a
>>> program to regenerate that plot.
>> Can't this be achieved by pickling/unpickling the mpl objects? Didn't
>> manage to test it, but it should work.
> 
> No, this has been discussed several times. Quite a bit of work would be 
> required to make all the extension code compatible with pickling. More 
> work, more complexity, more difficult code maintenance and testing. 
> It's not worth it, given the developer resources available for mpl.
a file format avoids all the issues that pickling causes.
thanks for all the comments
sam tygier