Hi all, We are pleased to announce the issue of the first release candidate for 3.5.0. Please test widely so that we may correct any bugs before the final release. Pre-built wheels are available for most major platforms, and can be installed using `pip install matplotlib==3.5.0rc1`. Other packages may also be available already; please check with your preferred source. The 3.3.0 release represents the work of 130 authors over 781 pull requests, and we thank them for their contributions. Some highlights of this release include: * We have switched to the pydata-sphinx-theme for the documentation. There may be some kinks to shake out still; please report a bug if anything is missing. * Figures have a `draw_without_rendering` method * New `Annulus` patch * New arrow styles in `ArrowStyle` and `ConnectionPath` * New colormap registry * Image interpolation is now possible at the RGBA stage * Tick positions and labels can be set simultaneously in `set_ticks` * More configurability of legend title and label colours * Type 42 subsetting is now enabled for the PDF & PS backends; this is one outcome of this year's GSoC. Thanks Aitik Gupta! * A slew of interactive tool improvements for the Slider widgets, and *Selector widgets, thanks to Eric Prestat! * Axes3D draw order and orientation can be manually controlled * Added GTK4 and Qt6 backends and HiDPI support to GTK backends, removal of Qt4 backend For further details, please see the What's new in Matplotlib 3.5.0 page: https://matplotlib.org/3.5.0/users/whats_new.html and the milestone on GitHub: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/milestone/59?closed=1 For packagers, this release contains some changes to dependencies: * NumPy 1.17 is now required. * Tk 8.4 is now required, when used. * The fontTools package is now required for font subsetting. * The underscore LaTeX package is now required for usetex output. * Matplotlib-specific build options have moved from setup.cfg to mplsetup.cfg, by default. This release is signed by my GPG key. The fingerprint is: 23CA B59E 3332 F94D 26BE F037 8D86 E7FA E5EB 0C10 and it is also used to sign this message.