[matplotlib-devel] [Matplotlib-users] define color cycle in matplotlibrc

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

http://www.mail-archive.com/mat...@li.../msg14772.html

The above thread includes two reasonable requests:

1) add color cycle as an rcParam

2) add a line style cycle as well

The first of these is easier to implement, although it requires a bit 
more than the patch provided.  Questions:

1) Should the the color_cycle be in the axes group?  Although it affects 
lines, it is defined only at the Axes level, and affects only lines 
drawn by plot.

Alternative: since it affects only plot, should there be a new "plot" 
group to make that explicit, so it would be rcParams['plot.color_cycle']?

2) It was pointed out that there is a strange connection between the 
color cycle and the lines.color rcParam.  This connection looks to me 
like a bit of legacy that can be dropped with little risk of pain in 
user land, since the default would still be to have the initial color in 
the cycle (blue) be the same as the default lines.color (blue).  The 
proposed difference is that setting lines.color would have no effect on 
the color_cycle, and vice-versa.  John, I think the present connection 
dates all the  way back to your work around svn r500 or so; please tell 
me if there is some compelling reason to keep it.  It appears to me that 
breaking the connection would make both the code and the actual mpl 
behavior simpler and less surprising, with no loss of useful functionality.

3) Would it make sense to add color_cycle to the Axes API, so that it 
can be set directly for a given axes as an alternative to going through 
the rc mechanism?  Right now it can be set via a function, but must be 
set before Axes creation; this doesn't make sense to me.  It would make 
more sense as an Axes property that could be set at any time, and would 
apply to subsequent calls to plot.

My sense is that as a matter of design strategy, whenever possible, one 
should be able to use the API, via properties, methods, or functions, to 
  locally set any options for which rcParams gives the global default 
values.

Eric