[IPython-dev] %pylab working and ready for testing...

[Fernando Perez]

Hi folks,

I've put up my version of trunk for review:

https://code.launchpad.net/~fdo.perez/ipython/trunk-dev/+merge/16695

but in addition to review (which I'd appreciate), any early testing is
also very welcome.  This was a single marathon session today, so there
are likely still lots of lingering problems; with all the GUI backend
management work, there's no way I know of to automate the testing, so
I'm sure I missed something.

This starts to get trunk into a more usable form for everyday work
that includes heavy matplotlib usage, as the old -pylab and friends
work again, and there's also something much nicer: you can now type

%pylab

at *any* time during your work session, and it will load pylab for
you.  No more 'oops, I forgot to start in pylab mode and now I need to
plot' :)

My hat's off to Brian for the refactoring work.  The code is now a
pleasure to work with, I never imagined someone would have the
patience, stamina and clarity of mind to make something so nice out of
the cat's hairball we'd originally created.  Very, very impressive,
and I am now very optimistic that we'll be able to build lots of nice
machinery reusing the same internal core.  There is still cleanup to
be done, but the foundation is there.

I'll be offline for a couple of days, camping over new year's, so
Happy New Year to everyone!

Cheers,

f