[IPython-dev] Detecting GUI mainloop running in IPython

[Gael Varoquaux]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:16:48AM -1000, Eric Firing wrote:
> I haven't looked at mlab.show(), but if it is derived from earlier 
> matplotlib show(), then you might want to take a look at how show() is 
> now implemented in mpl.  It works well with ipython 0.10 and 0.11.

Thanks Eric. mlab's show was not derived from any matplotlib code. None
the less, I had a quite look at SVN matplotlib to figure out how it was
done.

It seems to me that it is done in 'backend_bases.py', line 81, by
checking if IPython added a special attribute to the ShowBase instance.
Thus, it seems to rely on a collaboration between IPython and matplotlib.

Can anyone confirm or infirm?

Cheers,

Gaël