[Matplotlib-users] matlab (TM)

[John H. <jdh...@ac...>]

I'm concerned that at some point down the road, The Mathworks may not
like the fact that matplotlib uses the name matlab, which is
trademarked.  I think I'll rename the matlab interface to pylab.  In
some sense, this name is more appropriate any way, because I'd like to
incorporate the best features of IDL, gnuplot and python, while still
retaining and enhancing core matlab compatibility.  I emailed Travis,
who previously used pylab.sf.net before it became part of scipy, and
he didn't have a problem with our using this name.  And Fernando
already uses pylab as the option to ipython to make ipython support
matplotlib.

So my plan is to change the name of the matplotlib.matlab module to
matplotlib.pylab, but wanted propose this here first since this will
effect almost every script.  It should be an easy search and replace
operation, and I'll probably post a little python script to
recursively replace all matplotlib.matlab references in a given
directory with matplotlib.pylab, since I have a few directories myself
that will need to be renamed.

Comments or objections welcome.

JDH