Dynamically Generating a Graph in Python

[HansWL]

John Hunter <jdhunter at ace.bsd.uchicago.edu> wrote in message news:<mailman.4236.1096861162.5135.python-list at python.org>...
> >>>>> "HansWL" == HansWL  <HansWL at msn.com> writes:
> 
>     HansWL> I tried matplotlib 0.63 with Python 2.3.4 on an old Win98
>     HansWL> machine (500 MHz, 128 MB RAM) and found that I had to wait
>     HansWL> for at least 35 seconds before even the simplest demo plot
>     HansWL> appeared. Is this expected?
> 
> No it is not expected.  My guess is that something may be wrong with
> your configuration.  

Very likely, but I do not know what.

> While I don't have anything as clunky as your
> machine to test on <wink>, I do have python 2.3.4 with the same
> matplotlib on a 700MHz win98 box with 512 MB RAM.  On that machine,
> the standard simple plot (eg
> http://matplotlib.sf.net/examples/simple_plot.py) takes about 2s to
> launch.  Although your machine is a bit slower and has a good bit less
> memory, it's in the same ball park, and my test run is 15 times faster
> than yours.  I'm don't think the difference in RAM is the cause of the
> difference in performance, because matplotlib doesn't use anywhere
> near the amount of RAM you have on your system to make a simple plot.

The machine is old, but should able to deal with this. Actually,
changing the simple sine plot from 100 to 1000 points made no
difference in launch time (~ 35 s).

> Try saving`q the simple plot script linked above to your desktop and
> running it by double clicking on it.  Does that help?  If so, you may
> have an IDE conflict, as described on
> http://matplotlib.sf.net/faq.html#FREEZE .  Another common source of
> troubles is an incompatible Numeric / numarray setting - see
> http://matplotlib.sf.net/faq.html#SLOW .  

I was not using an IDE. Typing in commands from the DOS box gave me
the same result. I have both Numeric 23.1 and numarray 1.1 installed,
but switching between them made no difference.

> A third possibility is that
> your system is compromised by a virus or is running so many programs
> in the background (system tray) that it is out of RAM or some other
> resource.

That's not very likely. Norton Anti-virus is always on, and its virus
definition is up to date, and weekly checking is performed, no virus
was ever found. And I was not runing many programs. Actually, I
restarted Windows to run matplotlib to see if there is any difference.
None, so is getting rid of the few little programs in the system tray.
Most importantly, no other programs, including MATLAB 6.5, is behaving
this way. Of course, I am not implying that there is something wrong
with matplotlib, knowing that the Hubble people are using it to plot
large data sets. Maybe I have too much junk on my machine, and one of
them did not like matplotlib.

Maybe I should just install matplotlib on a differrent machine.

Thank you for your response.