Re: [Matplotlib-users] setting the default line style order

[<jk...@ik...>]

The question of setting the color and line style sequences comes up
every now and then, and although there are neat solutions like
Fernando demonstrated, perhaps we should add support for them to
matplotlib. The Matlab interface seems to be like this:

>> figure                                                                         
>> set(gca, 'LineStyleOrder', '-o|-x|-^') % sequence of three line styles         
>> set(gca, 'ColorOrder', [1 0 0; 0 0 1]) % sequence of two colors (red and blue)
>> set(gca, 'NextPlot', 'replacechildren') % don't reset the properties I just set
>> plot(random(6))

This plots six lines with different combinations of style and color;
the seventh line would look the same as the first. Probably you can
avoid the NextPlot thing by setting DefaultLineStyleOrder on the root
handle, but never mind.

So, to make the interface familiar to Matlab users, I suggest to add
properties line.linestyleorder and line.colororder that can take any
sequences of linestyles and colors, or an n-by-3 array of rgb color
values for the latter. I think the |-separated linestyles spec is a
hack (necessary in Matlab because it cannot have vectors of strings
because of the auto-flattening matrices) that we shouldn't emulate.
How does that sound?

-- 
Jouni K. Seppänen
http://www.iki.fi/jks