Re: [Matplotlib-users] possible to expand the current Colorcycle?

[John H. <jd...@gm...>]

On Dec 5, 2007 6:38 AM, S=F8ren Nielsen <sor...@gm...> wrot=
e:
> Hi,
>
> Is it possible to expand the colorcycle that matplotlib uses by default?
>
> in axes.py, class _process_plot_var_args, def _clear_color_cycle(self) It
> seems that self.colors are hardcoded to be self.colors =3D
> ['b','g','r','c','m','y','k'] ... is there a way to extend this? (Without
> changing the matplotlib code directly) I want to be able to extend it by =
ex.
> dashed lines or others.. i sometimes have a large number of plots to do, =
and
> the 7 default plot colors are not enough...
>
> I know I could manually make a handler in my program to handle the colors
> when I plot... but it would seem nicer if I could just pass a list of plo=
t
> colors to matplotlib.

I just made a chance in svn to expose the default color list.  Here is
an ipython session that shows how to use it:

In [1]: import matplotlib.axes as mplaxes

In [2]: x, y =3D rand(2,100)

In [3]: plot(x, y, 2*x, 2*y)
Out[3]:
[<matplotlib.lines.Line2D instance at 0x8f2dc8c>,
 <matplotlib.lines.Line2D instance at 0x8f2dd6c>]

In [4]: mplaxes._process_plot_var_args.defaultColors =3D ['red',
'darkslategray', 'wheat']

In [5]: clf()

In [6]: plot(x, y, 2*x, 2*y)

Darren, we might want to expose this in the matplotlib.conf, but
perhaps is it a rare enough request that it is enough to let people
tweak it manually when needed.  The only thing that is a bit ugly is
that Axes._process_plot_var_args has the leading underscore indicating
it should not be used outside of mpl, but this is easy enough to
remedy...

JDH