Re: [matplotlib-devel] Native backend for Mac OS X

[Ryan M. <rm...@gm...>]

John Hunter wrote:
> Hi Michiel,
> 
> This looks great -- in particular I am intrigued by the final timing
> results which show your backend 12 times faster than tkagg.  I am not
> sure where this speedup is coming from -- do you have some ideas?
> Because you are creating lots-o-subplots in that example, there is a
> lot of overhead at the python layer (many axes, many ticks, etc) so I
> don't see how a faster backend could generate such a significant
> improvement.  What kind of timings do you see if you issue a plot
> rather than bar call in that example?  One thing about bar in
> particular is that we draw lots of separate rectangles, each with thie
> own gc, and it has been on my wishlist for some time to do this as a
> collection.  If you are handling gc creation, etc, in C, that may
> account for a big part of the difference.
> 
> Since the new macosx backend was released in 0.98.5, I also need to
> decide whether this patch belongs on the branch, and hence will get
> pushed out as early as today in a bugfix release when some changes JJ
> and Michael are working on are ready, or the trunk, in which case it
> could be months.  In favor of the trunk: this is more of a feature
> enhancement than a bugfix, and patches to the branch should be
> bugfixes with an eye to stability of the released code, though a good
> argument could be made that this is a bugfix.  In favor of the branch:
> it is brand new code advertised as beta in 0.98.5 and so it is
> unlikely that anyone is using it seriously yet, and since it is beta,
> we should get as much of it out there ASAP so folks can test and pound
> on it. I'm in favor of branch, but I wanted to bring this up here
> since we are fairly new to the branch/trunk release maintenance game
> and want to get some input and provide some color about which patches
> should go where, especially in gray areas like this.

I'm +1 on going ahead and putting this on the branch, for the reasons you mentioned.

Ryan

-- 
Ryan May
Graduate Research Assistant
School of Meteorology
University of Oklahoma