Re: [Matplotlib-users] Interactive backends very (suprisingly?) slow for multiple subplots

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

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 9:07 AM, keflavich <kef...@gm...> wrote:

>
> Since there don't seem to be any forthcoming answers, I have a somewhat
> different question.  In the matplotlib FAQ, it states that using 'show()'
> puts you in the GUI mainloop
> (http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/faq/howto_faq.html#use-show).  However,
> using plot commands on the ipython command line does not shut down the
> command line generally.  I gathered from some googling that this is because
> ipython starts up the matplotlib graphics in a different 'thread', but I
> don't understand how this is done and most of what I've seen says it is
> bad.
>

most GUI mainloops are blocking, so after you start them you cannot issue
more commands from an interactive shell.  Either you need to run a GUI
shell, or in the case of ipython run the GUI in a separate thread.  One
exception to this is tkinter (tkagg), which plays nicely with a standard
python shell.  I understand that recent versions of pygtk work also w/o
running the mainloop in a separate thread, but I haven't dug into the
details.


>
> So, my question now: How can I exit the GUI mainloop without closing the
> graphics windows?
>

This question doesn't really make sense to me.  Perhaps you can clearly
describe your use case (what you need to do) rather than the proposed
solutions.

JDH