One of the biggest causes of controversy in mpl, and of difficulty in
teaching and learning mpl, is the divide between pyplot and the rest of
the library. There are at least two aspects:
1) plt.title() versus ax.set_title(), etc; that is, all the clunky
getters and setters on the OO side. JDH used to note that they were a
side-effect of his C++ heritage, and that he probably wouldn't have used
them if he had had more Python experience when he started mpl.
2) For interactive use, such as in the ipython console, one really wants
pyplot's draw_if_interactive() functionality; one doesn't want to have
to type explicit plt.draw() commands. Worse, plt.draw() operates on the
current figure, which might not be the figure that one just updated with
"ax2.set_title('the other plot')".
I think that both of these speed bumps can be removed fairly easily, in
an entirely backwards-compatible way.
The first is just a matter of propagating some shorter-form pyplot
function names back to Axes and Figure. This idea is mentioned at the
end of MEP 13, as an alternative to properties.
The second requires accepting some behavior in the Axes and Figure
classes that is conditional on the backend and the interactive state. I
think it would look *roughly* like this:
Add a method to Figure:
def draw_if_interactive():
if not is_interactive:
return
if not isinstance(self.canvas, interactive_canvases):
return
self.canvas.draw()
Append this method to suitable Figure methods such as suptitle().
Add a method to Axes:
def draw_if_interactive():
self.figure.draw_if_interactive()
Append this method to suitable Axes methods--all those that execute
changes, or at least those with corresponding pyplot functions.
Some additional logic (either a kwarg, or temporary manipulation of the
"interactive" flag, or of an Axes instance flag) would be needed to
block the drawing at intermediate stages--e.g., when boxplot is drawing
all its bits and pieces.
After these changes, the pyplot functions could be simplified; they
would not need their own draw_if_interactive calls.
Am I missing some major impediment? If not, I think this set of changes
would make it much easier to use and teach the OO interface, with pyplot
still being used where it is most helpful, such as in the subplots() call.
Eric
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