Re: [matplotlib-devel] An easier way to create figure and group of axes; useful?

[Fernando P. <fpe...@gm...>]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 11:47 AM, John Hunter <jd...@gm...> wrote:
> I disagree here -- if you are 2,1 or 1,2 rows x cols, 1D indexing is
> natural.  This is also the most common use case so the most important
> to get right.  If you aren't doing multiple subplots, a plain ol
> subplot(111) may be preferred to fig_subplots anyhow.
>

I agree with John that for nx1 or 1xn, 1-d indexing seems more
natural, and is the more pythonic solution given how numpy doesn't
distinguish between row and column arrays when they are 1-d, in
contrast to matlab.  This is why I went for the approach above.

Based on the feedback, I'll finish it tonight with squeeze=True as a
kwarg, that behaves:

- if True (default): single axis is returned as a scalar, Nx1 or 1xN
are returned as numpy 1-d arrays, and only NxM with N>1 and M>1 are
returned as a 2d array.

- if False, no squeezing at all is done, the return value is always a
2-d array, even if it ends up being 1x1.

I think this gives a very convenient interactive/lightweight scripting
interface, while letting application builders who may need to write
generic code that is dimension agnostic have robust code that needs no
special-casing by passing squeeze=False.


Unless I hear otherwise, I'll make the commit with these changes
(updating the docstring and example script accordingly).

Cheers,

f