RE: [Matplotlib-users] advice on writing an application

[<And...@gt...>]

>On 12/01/05 16:13, Matt Newville wrote:
>> Here's what I think the fundamental differences are.  Maybe Ken can=20
>> give an opinion too.

> My take on things is that WxMpl and MPlot solve two different
problems. =20
> WxMpl is intended to be a FigureCanvasWxAgg that has some
pointy-clicky=20
> user interactions (e.g. zoom) built in.  I gather that Matt considers=20
> it "focused on the programmer/script writer, not on the end user=20
> of an application" because it doesn't provide end-users with any means
> to edit the plot.  MPlot lets users interactively change the title,
> axes labels, etc.
>=20
> I wrote WxMpl after Matt sent me MPlot 0.7 because I felt that his=20
> approach wasn't solving my problem: I was thrilled what matplotlib=20
> and wanted *all* of it to Just Work with wxPython. Allowing users=20
> to edit plots was less important to me than supporting as many kinds
> of plots as possible.  By focusing on adding user interaction to=20
> FigureCanvasWxAgg I was able to support all of matplotlib's OO API
> in one fell swoop.

Sorry to horn in here, but this is a topic in which I am very
interested.  What I want is both of these solutions combined!  I'd like
to have the full power of MatPlotLib when I'm developing my
applications, but, I'd also like to have (nearly) that full power
presented to the user for further customization and interaction.  I'd
like to have many more features available to the user than are currently
provided by Mplot, but when I'm coding I'd like to be able to drop in a
complete panel without having to do the coding that I'd need to do with
WxMPL.

My idea is for an interaction model similar to most spreadsheet graph
objects (e.g. Excel), where context menus control the individual
components of the plot(s).  Perhaps with introspection, many of the
customizable features could be automatically extracted and presented to
the user, so that menus and dialog boxes wouldn't have to be completely
coded by hand.

I'd like the plot to appear simple (by default), but with suitable
access (perhaps triggered by mouseover?) to hidden features like a
toolbar, scrollable axes, crosshair cursors (with coordinate readout),
and zoom controls.

I'm certainly willing and able to contribute to this development.  I'm
conflicted as to which code base to begin with, however.

Andrew Henshaw
Georgia Tech Research Institute