Plotting with matplotlib

The matplotlib library (http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net) provides high quality 2D plotting for Python. Matplotlib can produce plots on screen using a variety of GUI toolkits, including Tk, GTK and WXPython. It also provides a number of commands useful for scientific computing, all with a syntax compatible with that of the popular Matlab program.

IPython accepts the special option -pylab (Sec. 5.2). This configures it to support matplotlib, honoring the settings in the .matplotlibrc file. IPython will detect the user's choice of matplotlib GUI backend, and automatically select the proper threading model to prevent blocking. It also sets matplotlib in interactive mode and modifies %run slightly, so that any matplotlib-based script can be executed using %run and the final show() command does not block the interactive shell.

The -pylab option must be given first in order for IPython to configure its threading mode. However, you can still issue other options afterwards. This allows you to have a matplotlib-based environment customized with additional modules using the standard IPython profile mechanism (Sec. 7.3): ``ipython -pylab -p myprofile'' will load the profile defined in ipythonrc-myprofile after configuring matplotlib.

Fernando Perez 2006-06-06