Re: [Matplotlib-users] save or pickle figure object

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

John Hunter wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 5:06 PM, Josef Koller <jk...@la...> wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>  I would like to save preliminary figures for later processing and
>> refinement with matplotlib. Is there a way to save or pickle a figure
>> object and later reload it. Matlab has a feature like that and and I was
>> wondering if matplotlib has it too.
> 
> No, it doesn't exist.  We've taken a stab at it once or twice, but
> have been stymied because we make extensive use of a python extension
> libray CXX, and these objects have resisted our attempts to pickle
> them.  With our recent transforms refactoring, which removes the
> hairiest CXX dependency, it may be worth taking another look, but
> noone is currently working on it.

My sense, based on very little experience, is that pickles of 
complicated objects are very fragile, so even if we could pickle 
figures, I fear it might cause more trouble ("I can't load this 
absolutely critical figure I pickled 6 months ago") than it would be worth.

Eric