[IPython-dev] rant: "%matplotlib inline"

[MinRK]

We get this report plenty, too. The idea seems to be that we should use an
importhook to make inline the default backend with IPython is running.
There seems to be a question of whether such a hook should be in matplotlib
or IPython, and each time we start the conversation, it wanders off to
other topics before we resolve it well enough for a PR. Hopefully we can
decide on an implementation next week at SciPy, and ship it.

I have a sample import hook
<https://github.com/minrk/profile_default/blob/master/startup/mplimporthook.py>
that does exactly this in my startup files. I’m not 100% certain it’s the
right thing to do, but I would be happy to see something like this in
either IPython or matplotlib.

-MinRK
​

On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 5:16 PM, William Stein <wstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> <Rant>
> Hi,
>
> I just want to register my frustration that by far the most common
> support request I get about IPython use in SageMathCloud is the
> following: "To display the plot, I'm tried to pl.show(), and also
> pl.savefig('test.png') as suggested by some answers online, but
> neither did the job. What is the correct command?"
>
> The answer is "%matplotlib inline", and there is a stackoverflow
> question here about it:
>
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19410042/how-to-make-ipython-notebook-inline-matplotlib-graphics
>
> I'm aware that disallowing the `--pylab inline` option when starting
> ipython on the command line was a choice that you made on purpose.
>
> No response required -- I'm just being a humble tech support person
> watching out for users :-)
>
> </Rant>
> _______________________________________________
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> IPython-dev at scipy.org
> http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/ipython-dev
>
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