urgent - Matplolib with IDLE!

[Rob Clewley]

Dear Ana,

I have the same problem with a similar setup (except Python 2.4.3) and
have tried the same solutions (BTW those steps really did used to work
on my machine using Python 2.3.5). In the short term you could either
try IPython (a proper solution to this problem, which returns me to
the prompt just fine after closing the figure) or try the following
"quick and dirty fix" with IDLE:

1) If your script does stuff other than define classes and functions,
put in a command that prevents it getting to the calculations (e.g.
insert a "1/0" line) or, for instance, turn all your calculations into
function calls that you can easily comment out (temporarily). Run your
script using F5 so that you just get the prompt.
3) Create an empty figure using pylab.figure() or whatever.
2) Close the figure and the IDLE console (command prompt window) that
opened when you ran the script (you have to say Yes when it asks about
killing a python process).
3) This leaves an orphaned python process which you have to clean up
later using your Task Manager, but ...
4) you can now continue to interact with any new IDLE console created
in the current session when you bring up new figures. i.e. uncomment
the parts of your script that actually do stuff and run it again.

At least that's a quick fix that's working for me while I await a
better answer too... Perhaps this hack will outrage someone's
sensibilities sufficiently that we'll hear of a better IDLE solution.

HTH,
Rob