What would you like to see in a book about Matplotlib?

[Sandro Tosi]

Hello Marco,
thanks for your reply (and sorry for my late one)

On Jan 6, 9:26 am, Marco Nawijn <naw... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 5, 10:57 am, Sandro Tosi <matrixh... at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am happy to hear that there might be a book on Matplotlib. I am
> using Matplotlib for a while now and find it a very usefull and
> powerfull library for generating graphs. I will try to answer some of
> your questions. I am by no means an expert in the field, so I only
> express my personal experience.

And that's fine, because the audience of the book is people that have
never seen matplotlib and wanted to learn it.

> >> What are you using matplotlib for? I currently use Matplotlib to generate a series of graphs that visualise data channels (strain measurements) during a structural test. These graphs need to be refreshed about every 4 seconds. Each of the graphs contains 1 to 6 curves.

Just out of curiosity: how do you refresh those plots? in a loop
closing/opening the figure or clear the figure and replot on it? are
those graphs embedded in an application or are just "shown on screen"?

> >> What are the things you like the most of matplotlib, that you want
>
> to give emphasis to? And why? In general I like the most the fact that
> I can generate high quality publication ready graphs with a consistent
> look with minimal effort.

Indeed, that's one of the reason for its use in so many scientific
environments.

> Further, although the matlab-style commands
> are very usefull I think the class interface is more powerfull. The
> class interface also has a steeper learning curve. So, for me it would
> be very interesting if much emphasis will be on the class interface.

Yes, we will show the "class" interface during the examples, while
showing the difference just for the sake of completeness.

> >> What are the (basic) things that, when you were beginning to use
>
> matplotlib, you wanted to see grouped up but couldn't find? I
> seriously hope the book is not for "dummies",

as already said, this bug is intended to people that knows nothing
about mpl, so an introductory part will begin the book.

> but provides at least a
> significant amount of information on more advanced features of
> Matplotlib.

and we will try to show as much features as possible, even the
advanced one.

> I think the currently available tutorials are sufficient
> to getting started. From my point of view I am very interested in:
>     - Dynamically updating a series of graphs
>     - Configuring layout of graphs (colors, labels, legends, etc.)
>     - Managing dimensions of the figure when you export the figure to
> e.g PNG. For me this is interesting in the sense that if I insert a
> figure in a report/paper, I would like that the fonts used in the
> graph remain proportional to the surrounding text.

Those will be surely in the book :)

> If you need more information please let me know.

Well, whatever comes to mind, please let me know :)

> I wish you good luck!

Cheers,
Sandro