[Edu-sig] IDLE and Matplotlib
John Zelle
john.zelle at wartburg.edu
Wed Jan 12 02:17:01 CET 2005
Hans,
I know you are already in communication/waiting for a bugfix on this,
but I have a quick inquiry. This sounds related to issues I've had with
my graphics library (now solved, knock on wood). I would think that
running IDLE -n would solve this problem for you. Please see my question
below:
Hans Fangohr wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I am about to teach Python to a number of students who already know
> how to use Matlab (on a basic level). For that reason, the matplotlib
> library for plotting curves is ideally suited (it seems quite good
> anyway).
>
> The teaching computers are Win XP machines. I have settled for the
> Enthough Python Edition and the latest matplotlib (both executables
> can be found in www.soton.ac.uk/~fangohr/download/python).
>
> I have prepared the exercises on linux and am now trying to run them
> in windows. This is where I realised that matplotlib doesn't work well
> with IDLE.
>
> More particularly, it is known that the default backend TkAgg doesn't
> work with IDLE (see here
> http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/backends.html#TkAgg)
> but it appears to work with "IDLE -n" (this is what it says on that
> web page).
>
> The problem I experience is this:
>
> -start idle
> -execute these commands:
>
> import pylab
> pylab.plot(range(10))
> pylab.show()
>
> This produces a figure window which seems to work fine.
>
> At this point when closing the figure window, I can't get the IDLE
> prompt active again. (It seems that IDLE thinks the program and the
> figure process are still running, and is waiting for control to return.)
>
> This, in itself, is maybe not suprising. However, the idle -n switch
> doesn't seem to solve the problem for me (see below).
>
> The same problem is observed when I execute a program in the IDLE
> editor (by pressing F5).
>
> What do people think how I should continue?
>
> I could
>
> - try to make IDLE work with matplotlib (I think this is my preferred
> option)
> In that case, how do I tell IDLE on Windows to start with -n? (Not a
> Windows freak). In the start menu, I can change the properties for the
> link to idle from '''
>
> C:\Python23\pythonw.exe "C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw"
>
> C:\Python23\pythonw.exe "C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw" "-n"
>
> but this doesn't seem to solve the problem: I get exactly the same
> behaviour as described above.
When you say you get exactly the same result, does this mean that IDLE's
behavior is unchanged? If so, you are not getting the -n flag set. IDLE
should fire up with a message that simply says "no subprocess" instead
of the warning about personal firewalls. If you just mean that
Matplotlib acts the same, that's a different story. What happens if you
change the menu item to this:
C:\Python23\pythonw.exe "C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw -n"
Unfortunately, I don't have access to Windows to try this out at the
moment. Another way to fire up IDLE in the -n mode is to right-click on
a Python file and then select "edit with IDLE." I actually find it
annoying that opening IDLE this way puts it in -n mode, but it might be
a way to test out exactly what's happening.
>
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