[SciPy-user] plotting a surface

[Tim]

Hello,
I have some code written in IDL but would very much like to switch to IDl
for the next projects because the synatx seems friendlier to me.

One question though: 

How do I conceive surface plots in matplotlib or any other plotting module?

Many tutorials state that this isn't possible, so far.

Is that right?

tutorials with remarks about surface plotting:

1) http://xweb.geos.ed.ac.uk/~hcp/notes_python.pdf
cf. An Introduction to matplotlib
3.1 Surface plots
Matplotlib has no equivalent of R’s persp or IDL’s surface.
This section left blank.

2) matplotlib does not yet have equivalents for all IDL 2-D plotting capability
(e.g., surface plots)

cf. http://dae.iaa.csic.es/~eperez/Python-IDL-comparison.pdf
"Appendix B: Why would I switch from IDL to Python (or not)?" page 3

3) no real equivalent python command in
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~jbattat/computer/python/science/idl-numpy.html

Thanks in adavnce for your comments on that!

Tim