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I am not a MPL developer, but I am using mplot3d quite heavily right now to support 3D plots for a client of mine. I have found many bugs and lacking features which I require in the mplot3d library and have modified my local copy of the code significantly. I am eagerly awaiting Reinier's return from vacation so that I can work with him to integrate my improvements. For the most part, these fixes simply make the 3D plots behave more like the 2D plots. Here is a tentative list of my changes so far:
 * bug fix: placement of title in 3D plots to match 2D plot behavior
 * bug fix: allow facecolors and edgecolors to be specified as 'none' in 3D scatter plots to match the 2D scatter plot behavior
 * bug fix: allow all keyword arguments to be used in text3D
 * bug fix: allow an array of colors to be passed into bar3d to specify the colors on a per-bar or per-face basis
 * bug fix: allow all keyword arguments to be used in bar3d
 * bug fix: allow 3d scatter plots with 3 or 4 points with colors specified
 * new feature: new method to disable mouse rotation in 3D plots
 * new feature: new Z-order sorting heuristic to eliminate rendering issues for the common case of using bar3d to visualize a 2D histogram
 * new feature: new method text2D
 * code cleanup: warn when canvas is None which disables mouse callbacks
 * code cleanup: fully document more methods in mplot3d
Although I haven't written them yet, I can probably create a couple more example codes:
 * example code: demonstrate use of transform() to do rectangle selection in 3D scatter plots
 * example code: mplot3d with wx - demonstrate turning off mouse rotations to make pan and zoom toolbar buttons work properly
There are a few other bugs that I would really like fixed, but can't quite figure out right now. Hopefully Reinier will be able to shed some light on these:
 * axis label picking for 3D axes
 * how to set axis tick label properties for 3D axes
 * allow 3d boxes with transparent faces to make "wireframe" boxes
 * fix z-order sorting across multiple calls to bar3d()
I should note that because of my client, I have a vested interest in seeing mplot3d (with the above bug fixes) make it into a stable release of MPL. But at the same time, I don't have a lot of spare time to spend on MPL development.
Thanks,
-Ben
________________________________________
From: John Hunter [jd...@gm...]
Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 12:19 PM
To: Jakub Nowacki
Cc: mat...@li...
Subject: Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?
On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Jakub Nowacki
<j.s...@go...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have quite general question. Since mplot3d now back in matplotlib, the question is: is it going to stay there? Or is it some test release? I was just wondering cause sometimes I use 3d plotting and use Mayavi2 for that but in many cases it's like killing the spider with a shotgun, not mentioning that installation process can be quite tricky.
>
> Thanks for answer in advance/
Like anything in open source, it stays as long as someone supports it.
 The original implementation in matplotlib.axes3d was not supported by
the original authors and none of the core developers had the bandwidth
to support it, so we pulled it when a significant transformations
refactoring broke the existing 3D support and noone had the resources
to fix it. It languished for a while to Reinier picked up the torch
with help from others and reintegrated it into mpl. To date he has
been supporting it but is mostly acting alone (bus factor 1) . So we
plan to continue support for mpl but we need developers to do it, so
don't be shy about jumping into the code base and seeing if you can
make incremental enhancements when you need them.
On the plus side, the core of mpl is in pretty good shape, so I don't
anticipate the need for a significant refactoring of the internals of
the kind Michael did a couple of years ago which broke mplot3d the
first time.
JDH
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John Hunter wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Andrea Gavana <and...@gm...> wrote:
>> On 21 February 2010 15:44, Alan G Isaac wrote:
>>> On 2/21/2010 10:29 AM, Wayne Watson wrote:
>>>> plot(2.8,3.4) doesn't work in my program
>>>>
>>> Why should it?
>> I believe it should.
> 
> It does in svn -- though it unhelpfully plots a line segment with one
> vertex (invisible). Eric, I think you added this support. For length
> one sequences, perhaps we should default to a marker?
I don't think so; this strikes me as a step too far. Anyone plotting a 
single point should know that they need a marker, and that they have to 
specify which marker to use. If they don't know it, they need to learn 
it PDQ. There is a limit to the usefulness of trying to guess, or 
provide defaults, and providing a default marker for this case is beyond 
that limit. A reasonable argument could be made that I should not even 
have added the non-sequence support.
Eric

Alan G Isaac wrote:
> On 2/21/2010 10:29 AM, Wayne Watson wrote:
>> plot(2.8,3.4) doesn't work in my program
>> 
> 
> Why should it?
> Plot takes once or two *sequences* of numbers as arguments.
In more recent versions than the OP has, it can also handle
plot(2.8, 3.4, 'o')
With a single point, of course, one must specify a marker, as above.
Eric
> 
>> plot([2.8],[3.4]) does work
>> 
> 
> Well yes, that is two sequences.
> 
>> plot((2.8,3.4)) apparently creates two points
>> 
> 
> Yes, if you only provide one sequence,
> it is treated as the ordinates (i.e., second coordinates),
> and the abscissas are generated for you.
> 
> See the examples in the documentation:
> http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot.plot
> 
> Alan Isaac
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval
> Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs
> proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance.
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> http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev
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On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Jakub Nowacki
<j.s...@go...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have quite general question. Since mplot3d now back in matplotlib, the question is: is it going to stay there? Or is it some test release? I was just wondering cause sometimes I use 3d plotting and use Mayavi2 for that but in many cases it's like killing the spider with a shotgun, not mentioning that installation process can be quite tricky.
>
> Thanks for answer in advance/
Like anything in open source, it stays as long as someone supports it.
 The original implementation in matplotlib.axes3d was not supported by
the original authors and none of the core developers had the bandwidth
to support it, so we pulled it when a significant transformations
refactoring broke the existing 3D support and noone had the resources
to fix it. It languished for a while to Reinier picked up the torch
with help from others and reintegrated it into mpl. To date he has
been supporting it but is mostly acting alone (bus factor 1) . So we
plan to continue support for mpl but we need developers to do it, so
don't be shy about jumping into the code base and seeing if you can
make incremental enhancements when you need them.
On the plus side, the core of mpl is in pretty good shape, so I don't
anticipate the need for a significant refactoring of the internals of
the kind Michael did a couple of years ago which broke mplot3d the
first time.
JDH

On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Andrea Gavana <and...@gm...> wrote:
> On 21 February 2010 15:44, Alan G Isaac wrote:
>> On 2/21/2010 10:29 AM, Wayne Watson wrote:
>>> plot(2.8,3.4) doesn't work in my program
>>>
>>
>> Why should it?
>
> I believe it should.
It does in svn -- though it unhelpfully plots a line segment with one
vertex (invisible). Eric, I think you added this support. For length
one sequences, perhaps we should default to a marker?

On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 03:52:41PM +0000, Andrea Gavana wrote:
> On 21 February 2010 15:44, Alan G Isaac wrote:
> > On 2/21/2010 10:29 AM, Wayne Watson wrote:
> >> plot(2.8,3.4) doesn't work in my program
> > Why should it?
> I believe it should.
> > Plot takes once or two *sequences* of numbers as arguments.
> I don't think it would be so complicated for the "plot" code to check
> for the type of the input arguments and then create a list (or a
> sequence) on the fly, i.e. (pseudo-code, untested):
> if isinstance(x, types.IntType):
>  x = [x]
Or rather:
 np.atleast_1d
Gaël

On 2/21/2010 10:44 AM, Alan G Isaac wrote:
> http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot.plot 
>
Wayne's confusion on the admissible arguments to 'plot' led me to look
again at the documentation. I suggest adding the following as the second
sentence:
 Here x and y are sequences of numbers,
 which are the first and second coordinates
 of the points to be plotted.
Alan Isaac

On 21 February 2010 15:44, Alan G Isaac wrote:
> On 2/21/2010 10:29 AM, Wayne Watson wrote:
>> plot(2.8,3.4) doesn't work in my program
>>
>
> Why should it?
I believe it should.
> Plot takes once or two *sequences* of numbers as arguments.
I don't think it would be so complicated for the "plot" code to check
for the type of the input arguments and then create a list (or a
sequence) on the fly, i.e. (pseudo-code, untested):
if isinstance(x, types.IntType):
  x = [x]
The same apply for the second input.
As it appears to work in tools like Matlab, I don't see why MPL should
not support it. But then, I am no expert in MPL so it might be
difficult to do it for other reasons.
Andrea.
"Imagination Is The Only Weapon In The War Against Reality."
http://xoomer.alice.it/infinity77/
http://thedoomedcity.blogspot.com/

On 2/21/2010 10:29 AM, Wayne Watson wrote:
> plot(2.8,3.4) doesn't work in my program
> 
Why should it?
Plot takes once or two *sequences* of numbers as arguments.
> plot([2.8],[3.4]) does work
> 
Well yes, that is two sequences.
> plot((2.8,3.4)) apparently creates two points
> 
Yes, if you only provide one sequence,
it is treated as the ordinates (i.e., second coordinates),
and the abscissas are generated for you.
See the examples in the documentation:
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot.plot
Alan Isaac

I find this puzzling. It seems as though the x,y points in some fashion 
can vary.
plot(2.8,3.4) doesn't work in my program
plot([2.8],[3.4]) does work
plot((2.8,3.4)) apparently creates two points
Here's code where I have had to make x,y each a list. I've made comments 
about the behavior of x,y
 fig = figure()
 ax1 = fig.add_subplot(111)
 v = (0, 640, 0, 480) # min, max on x and y
 ax1.plot(xy[:,0], xy[:,1]) # draw all the lines
 title(afname)
 ylabel('vertical pixels')
 xlabel('horizontal pixels')
 # An attempt to draw an easy large circle. It worked, but zoom 
moves the circle. 320,235 not locked
 # If use (320,235), then get two circles.
 # ax1.plot([320],[235], marker='o', mfc='y', ms=400) # 
draw large circle
 ax1.plot([xy[0,0]],[xy[0,1]],'gs') # place marker at start. 
Had to "list-ize" array columns, but seems right
 ax1.plot([xy[npts-1,0]], [xy[npts-1,1]],'rs') # mark it is a 
last frame. More list-izing, but seems right
 ax1.plot([xy[k_max,0]], [xy[k_max,1]], marker='+', mec='g', 
ms=15) # mark maximum dist frame. Same listizing
 # Next is required for what I'm pretty sure are float64 numbers
 ax1.plot([amax_x], [amax_y], marker='o', mec='m',ms=5) # mark 
max amplitude.
 ax1.axis(v)
 show()
I think the zoom difficulty can be handled with patches. An area I have 
yet to probe.
-- 
 "There is nothing so annoying as to have two people
 talking when you're busy interrupting." -- Mark Twain

Hmm. Actually I put it aside, thinking that it was correct. After 
spending quite a bit of time on it through queries to a few "forums" I 
was happy to find the rest of the story. This was not something I was 
desperate for, especially given the apparent complexity of it for 
matplotlib. The tutorial that got me started was pretty accurate for 
non-graphic programs, but suffered in one area of what I would call not 
emphasizing an important point. Once found all went fine.
I personally do not know the other" five". I had brought this up on 
other "forums", and it attracted several others. A few had no clue at 
all even though they offered solutions, but would seem to be content 
with the resolution.
So what do we have here? An incomplete and possibly wrong wiki? I find 
this a bit bizarre if several credible authors of Python point to py2exe 
as useful, but apparently do not tell the whole story.
So, yes, in light of this revelation, then I'm confused.
On 2/20/2010 10:43 PM, Christopher Barker wrote:
>
> Wayne Watson wrote:
> 
>> Thank you. That last link probably enlightened about six people.
>> 
> Are you one of those six? That page is unfortunate -- some folks don't
> quite "get" that a Wiki is supposed to be edited -- not just added to,
> like a forum. So that page could really use some clean up -- but if you
> read the whole page, you can see that it's gotten pretty easy.
>
> Are you still confused?
>
> -Chris
>
> 
>> On 2/19/2010 8:28 PM, Christoph Gohlke wrote:
>> 
>>> <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=py2exe+matplotlib+data+files&l=1> leads me to
>>> <http://www.py2exe.org/index.cgi/MatPlotLib>.
>>> 
-- 
 "There is nothing so annoying as to have two people
 talking when you're busy interrupting." -- Mark Twain

Hi,
I have quite general question. Since mplot3d now back in matplotlib, the question is: is it going to stay there? Or is it some test release? I was just wondering cause sometimes I use 3d plotting and use Mayavi2 for that but in many cases it's like killing the spider with a shotgun, not mentioning that installation process can be quite tricky.
Thanks for answer in advance.
Cheers,
Jakub

Hi,
If I understand right you want to redraw new trend lines when you zoom in (recalculated for the visible data). You then have to use event callbacks which usage example is shown here (view limits change example):
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/event_handling/viewlims.html
For one trend line it's relatively easy, you just recalculate the beginning and the end points. In the case when you have to guess how many lines you have to use it begins to be quite tricky if you haven't got a proper algorithm for that.
Hope it helps.
Cheers,
Jakub
On 21 Feb 2010, at 08:48, logan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm plotting some graphs with matplotlib and I would like to do the following:
> 
> Draw lines on the graph (match two points to show the up-trend or
> down-trend line of a stock). I would want the lines drawn by me on the
> graph resize accordingly as one zooms in or out of the graph.
> 
> Can anyone kindly point me to the API's or examples on how to do this?
> I have tried looking but couldn't get it working.
> 
> Thanks,
> Hitesh
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval
> Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs
> proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance.
> See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta.
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev
> _______________________________________________
> Matplotlib-users mailing list
> Mat...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-users

Hi,
I'm plotting some graphs with matplotlib and I would like to do the following:
Draw lines on the graph (match two points to show the up-trend or
down-trend line of a stock). I would want the lines drawn by me on the
graph resize accordingly as one zooms in or out of the graph.
Can anyone kindly point me to the API's or examples on how to do this?
I have tried looking but couldn't get it working.
Thanks,
Hitesh

Wayne Watson wrote:
> Thank you. That last link probably enlightened about six people.
Are you one of those six? That page is unfortunate -- some folks don't 
quite "get" that a Wiki is supposed to be edited -- not just added to, 
like a forum. So that page could really use some clean up -- but if you 
read the whole page, you can see that it's gotten pretty easy.
Are you still confused?
-Chris
> On 2/19/2010 8:28 PM, Christoph Gohlke wrote:
>> <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=py2exe+matplotlib+data+files&l=1> leads me to
>> <http://www.py2exe.org/index.cgi/MatPlotLib>.
-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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