Re: [Matplotlib-users] How to mix maths & text in labels ?

[Arnd B. <arn...@we...>]

On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, William Henney wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 13:25 -0500, John Hunter wrote:
[...]
> > For *Agg, we use tex + dvipng and load the output as a transparent,
> > anti-aliased raster, caching the dvipng output in ~/.tex.cache for
> > efficiency.  For PS, we use tex + dvips + psfrag + latex + a patched
> > ps2epsi.  The latter is cumbersome, but it works.  In an ideal world,
> > we would simply use tex + dvips but embedding the postscript fragments
> > generated by dvips in arbitrary locations on the figure, but this has
> > proved challenging.
>
> Have you looked at how PyX (http://pyx.sourceforge.net/) handles things?
> They have excellent support for tex/latex labels and it seems to be
> implemented in a much "cleaner" way than you describe above. As far as I
> can see, they run a single TeX job containing all the strings from the
> current plot (see the texrunner class in pyx/text.py) and then parse the
> dvi output themselves (see pyx/dvifile.py)

just comment/question, which might be irrelevant, but still:
would a PyX backend make sense?

One approach could be to write out a python
script with the PyX commands corresponding
to the present graphics.
(For example, one then could tweak the resulting script
until the result is fine for publication...)

> The big advantages matplotlib has over PyX in my opinion are a more
> intuitive API and a larger/more-active developer pool and user base.

Creating plots using PyX tends to need more code than with matplotlib.
On the other hand PyX is *very* flexible which is
reflected in its design. OTOH, the quality of PyX generated graphics
exceeds anything else I have looked at in more detail.
Also, it is easily possible to
change the fonts and their size (+ linewidths, colors etc.)
depending on whether one needs a graphics for inclusion
into a publication (e.g. computer modern roman font)
or a presentation (e.g. cmbright family)
so that graphics and the text around it match nicely.

The wish of a "front-end" to PyX did come up on the PyX mailing
list, if I remember correctly.
So maybe using a matplotlib+PyX-backend combination
would be something useful.

Best wishes,

Arnd