Sandro Tosi wrote: > Hello and Happy 2009! Hi,
> > I received the interesting proposal to author a book on Matplotlib, > the powerful 2D plotting library for Python. > > While preparing the arguments list, I'd like to hear even your > opinion, because different points-of-view will lead to a better > product. > > Some basic question I'd like to ask are: > > - what are you using matplotlib for? I'm using it for scientific visualization and to create graphics for publications. > - what are the things you like the most of matplotlib, that you want > to give emphasis to? And why? The best thing for me about matplotlib is its publication quality. The nice clean anti-aliased graphics really look good, and made it an obvious choice when I was looking for graphic packages. The fact that it's based on python is even better for me, because that's what I was already using for scripting. The simple pyplot interface is also a plus, you can started producing great looking graphics almost immediately. > - what are the (basic) things that, when you were beginning to use > matplotlib, you wanted to see grouped up but couldn't find? I don't know if you consider it basic or not, but I would have liked better documentation of the object oriented interface (matplotlib). The pylab / pyplot interface is in general simple enough. As I started using this project some time ago its documentation wasn't as complete as it is now. > - what would you like to see in a book about matplotlib? As above, at least a chapter about the object oriented interface showing how to embed matplotlib on a application, and outlining the structure of the OO interface. > - what are some those advanced feature that made you yell "WOW!!" ? I haven't really used matplotlib's advanced features. There are some that I like, such as automatic legend placement and mathtext support. The number of supported backends is impressive just by itself, making matplotlib much more useful. There are some little things such as the search order for the matplotlibrc file that make it possible to specify different settings for a given directory. Although not a feature, another thing that impressed me was the quality of the source code, it's very clean an well structured. > - what are the things you'd like to explore of matplotlib and never > had time to do? I never had the time to try the masked arrays although I think they will be useful for me. I should also explore how to create custom color maps. > > Your suggestions are really appreciated :) And wish me good luck! > I was going to! Good luck, I hope you manage to take this project to completion. João Silva ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-users mailing list Matplotlib-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-users
