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

[Eric F. <ef...@ha...>]

Jouni K. Seppänen wrote:
> 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?
> 

Are you talking about Axes properties (instance attributes) or rcParam 
entries or both?  In any case, I agree that built-in support would easy 
to provide and would help enough people to be worthwhile.

Eric