matplotlib-devel Mailing List for matplotlib

Is there a reason that for the GTK backend gtk.DrawingArea was used 
instead of gtk.Layout? As far as I can tell gtk.Layout can do everything 
that gtk.DrawingArea can, but has the additional advantage that you can 
place widgets on the canvas, which can be extremely useful. I tried a 
quick patch (which I can send if anyone wants), where I got it working 
fine. The main changes (there aren't many) are where changes to the 
window would be make, 'self.window' needs to be replaced with 
'self.bin_window', and I also found I had to connect to the 
'size-allocate' event to have it properly redrawwhen the window size 
changed.
As a side note, one feature that this might allow, would be to allow for 
matplotlib-widgets to be drawn using the GTK if the backend were 
detected (much like how SWT, for Eclipse works).
Also, on a complete tanget, does anyone know of a good method of saving 
animations done in MPL? The only two methods that I can think of right 
now are to (1) interface with matlab, or (2) save each frame, and create 
an animated gif. As my movies are fairly large, neither seem like a 
great option.
After searching around some, I found pymedia, but when I try to import 
it, all it manages to do is crash. While a SWIG interface could be 
created for FFMPEG, it would be nice if there were some other option.
Thanks,
Abe