From barrett at stsci.edu  Tue Aug 10 10:54:18 2004
From: barrett at stsci.edu (Paul Barrett)
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 10:54:18 -0400
Subject: [AstroPy] Announcing matplotlib v0.61
Message-ID: <4118E19A.4080303@stsci.edu>

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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
"""


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-- 
Paul Barrett, PhD      Space Telescope Science Institute
Phone: 410-338-4475    ESS/Science Software Branch
FAX:   410-338-4767    Baltimore, MD 21218
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