matplotlib-devel Mailing List for matplotlib

Hi John and Fernando,
John, here is the quick answer to your questions:
* the patch does almost nothing (a few calls to a dummy function) except 
when the gui_protect rcParam is enabled
* when enabled the overhead is acceptable (on my Pentium III 500MHz), 
but import time of pylab is a little longer, because most of the work 
happens there. Also, only the functions and methods defined by 
matplotlib are protected. The idea is that if you call functions or 
methods from the gtk module, you ought to know what you're doing anyway 
(for that matter, I am not as ambitious as gui_thread).
* the patch currently doesn't work with wx because I've not finished the 
work, but it is doable. The GTK or WX mainloop is launched at the time 
the backend is imported, and only the one for the backend you are using 
will be launched.
* if you use interactive.py, or the code in IPython, you'd better not 
enable gui_protect. If you do, 2 GTK mainloops will be launched. This is 
allowed in GTK, but doesn't make sense.
* the GTK mainloop (probably same for WX) can run concurrently with tk. 
This means no problem plotting GTK from IDLE. You can even switch 
backends at runtime by reloading matplotlib.backends and matplotlib.pylab
* the GTK and WX mainloops cannot run concurrently. This is because, at 
least on Linux, WX itself launches a GTK mainloop (it's called WxGTK for 
a reason :). It might be possible to use this very mainloop to also 
display GTK figures, but I've had no luck with this until now.
Fernando, I've been looking again at gui_thread. I now understand the 
beauty and power of it, but it is also more brittle, which means a lot 
of work and testing. It might prove the best solution in the end, though.
I took no offense at all about IPython, so neither should you :-)
I just mentioned it because it is the advised solution in matplotlib doc.
Have a nice day,
BC
PS: You don't have to CC me, I'm subscribed to the list.