matplotlib-devel Mailing List for matplotlib

John Hunter wrote:
> What's new in matplotlib-0.61.0 - 
> * You can put a .matplotlibrc file in a dir to override the one in
> your HOME dir. If you have a project, say a book, and you want to
> make a bunch of images with the same look and feel for the book,
> you can place a custom rc file in the code dir for that book and
> this won't affect the configs you use for normal, interactive use.
Just a question/suggestion on this. Is there any user-available function to 
load matplotlibrc files? Instead of relying on .files (hidden from normal ls 
calls), it would be nice if _any_ file could live in a directory defining this 
configuration. One could then in a script for a specific project write:
load_rc('myproject_matplolibrc')
...
This would even allow you to cleanly maintain multiple rc files in the same 
directory, in case you want. I also think it serves better the 'explicit is 
better than implicit' python mantra: I'd even prefer NOT to have silent 
loading of .matplotlibrc files beyond that in ~/, since this would mean that 
matplotlib will behave differently depending on where you start it. I think 
this can be confusing.
Just having an available loadrc() routine would solve the surprise issue, 
allow multiple rc files per directory (for interactive and publication work, 
for example), and the user cost would remain minimal: just a simple function 
call to do the loading.
Just some ideas...
Best,
f

What's new in matplotlib-0.61.0 - 
 Note win32 pygtk users - if you encounter problems or errors related
 to svg loading, see note at end of this email.
You can read these announce notes in html with hyperlinks at
http://matplotlib.sf.net/whats_new.html.
 * A new, enhanced, navigation toolbar. Set 'toolbar : toolbar2' in
 matplotlibrc to try it out. Tutorial on the new toolbar is at
 http://matplotlib.sf.net/tutorial.html#toolbar2. Note that this
 toolbar behaves very differently than the classic toolbar. To use
 it, you must click on the pan/zoom or zoom to rect and then
 interact with the axes by dragging your mouse over it. The
 'forward', 'back' and 'home' buttons are used to navigate between
 previously defined view limits. At some point we'll add multiple
 simultaneous axes support for the new toolbar but we're still
 mulling over the interface - if you need it you can still uses
 toolbar : classic.
 * Mathtext for PS!!! Also, PS now embeds TrueType fonts so the same
 fonts you use in the *Agg GUIs should be displayed in PS
 output. Thanks Paul Barrett!
 * The imread function is used to load PNGs into arrays. I'd like to
 add more image loaders and savers down the road -
 http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/matplotlib.matlab.html#-imread
 * New event handling. The functions mpl_connect and mpl_disconnect
 are used for backend independent event handling. The callback
 signature is func(event). See
 http://matplotlib.sf.net/tutorial.html#events and
 http://matplotlib.sf.net/examples/coords_demo.py. The new events
 carry lots of useful information in them, like the coords in
 display and data units, the axes instance they were over, keys
 pressed during the event and more.
 * Many fixes to the SVG backend, including page layout, font support
 and image support. SVG is now considered alpha. You can save
 ps/eps/svg figures from GUI backends by providing the right
 extensions. SVG is currently the fastest backend in my tests.
 * More memory leaks fixed - see
 http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/faq.html#LEAKS for details. My
 estimate is that complex figures (multiple subplots, images, etc..)
 now leak no more than 10-50 bytes per figure. Down from several
 hundred bytes per figure in 0.60.
 * Vertical mathtext in backend_agg (ylabels now work properly!).
 mathtext with arbitrary rotations in PS. Thanks Jim Benson and
 Paul Barrett!
 * Added some abbrev functions in matplotlib.lines, mainly for
 interactive users trying to save key strokes. markerfacecolor is a
 lot of keys! For lines, these abbrevs were added
 aa : antialiased
 c : color
 ls : linestyle
 lw : linewidth
 mec : markeredgecolor
 mew : markeredgewidth
 mfc : markerfacecolor
 ms : markersize
 Thus you can type --not necessarily recommended for readability in
 scripts or apps but great for throwaway use in interactive shells
 
 # no antialiasing, thick green markeredge lines
 >>> plot(range(10), 'ro', aa=False, mew=2, mec='g')
 Analogs in matplotlib.patches
 aa : antialiased
 lw : linewidth
 ec : edgecolor
 fc : facecolor
 * You can put a .matplotlibrc file in a dir to override the one in
 your HOME dir. If you have a project, say a book, and you want to
 make a bunch of images with the same look and feel for the book,
 you can place a custom rc file in the code dir for that book and
 this won't affect the configs you use for normal, interactive use.
 * Updated installing instructions at
 http://matplotlib.sf.net/installing.html (see also INSTALL in src
 distro). Fixed a tk/osx install problem in setupext.py
 * New demo for wx/wxagg showing how to to make a flicker free cursor
 that follows the mouse and reports the coords in a status bar - see
 http://matplotlib.sf.net/examples/wxcursor_demo.py
 * Numerous bug fixes and minor enhancements detailed at
 http://matplotlib.sf.net/CHANGELOG
Downloads at http://sourceforge.net/projects/matplotlib
pygtk / win32 bug
 Alas, an enterprising matplotlib user found a bug in matplotlib-0.61
 on win32 with recent versions of pygtk even before the announcement.
 Sigh. Is it just me or is testing multiple GUIs with multiple,
 incompatible versions on multiple platforms a pain? 
 Apparently this bug is only exposed on recent versions of pygtk for
 win32. If you encounter problems, try removing or commenting out
 the last lines of site-packages\matplotlib\backends\backend_gtk.py
 which set the matplotlib minimization icon. Eg, triple quote
"""
# set icon used when windows are minimized
if gtk.pygtk_version >= (2,2,0):
 basedir = matplotlib.rcParams['datapath']
 fname = os.path.join(basedir, 'matplotlib.svg')
 try: gtk.window_set_default_icon_from_file (fname)
 except gobject.GError, exc: print >>sys.stderr, exc
"""