[Matplotlib-users] General formatting question for Pie / Bar charts

[mattwarren <mat...@ho...>]

Hi,  I'm hoping you can help. I've been reading through the matplotlib
documentation but finding it fairly confusing.


I am plotting some pie and bar charts, example code would be similar to,


def makepie(labels,slices,titlestring,outputname,FIGUREID,FIGSIZE):
	colorrange=[]
	for c in range(0,len(labels)):
		colorrange.append(( 0.5 ,0.5,0.5+(c*(0.5/len(labels)))))
	figure=plt.figure(FIGUREID, figsize=FIGSIZE)
	axes=figure.add_axes([0.1,0.1,0.8,0.8])
	chart=plt.pie(slices,labels=labels, shadow=True, colors=colorrange)
	#update formatting
	for pieslice in chart[1]: #0 is patches, 1 is text instances
		pieslice.set_fontname('Arial')
		pieslice.set_fontsize(6)
	figure.get_axes()[0].set_title(titlestring, bbox={'facecolor':'0.75',
'pad':6}, fontsize='x-small')
	plt.savefig(outputname)

The trouble is, the resulting pie isn't so pretty, and example is

http://www.nabble.com/file/p26060403/client_by_migtime.png 

I would like some general examples for updating the formatting - for example 
no matter what I have tried so far I cannot get the background to be
transparent rather than white, I dont really understand how to adjust the
positions of the labels and what options I have with the pie chart for doing
that.


I did figure out the font size and type changes, but that was more a shot in
the dark - I dont really understand the object I have programmatically or
the 'model' behind matplotlib and how it constructs an image.

I understand this is a slightly vague question, but hope someone can help!

Thanks,

Matt.

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