Re: [matplotlib-devel] Use of Color Cycles for Hist

[Jeff K. <kl...@wi...>]

Alright, I have attached a top-level diff that contains the changes to
axes.py that allow sending multiple colors to the 'color' argument in
Axes.hist.

Below is a short examples that passes lists to 'colors' and 'labels'.

Cheers,
Jeff

|| Jeff Klukas, Research Assistant, Physics
|| University of Wisconsin -- Madison
|| jeff.klukas@gmail | jeffyklukas@aim | jeffklukas@skype
|| http://www.hep.wisc.edu/~jklukas/

----------------------------------
import pylab as P

mu, sigma = 200, 25
x0 = mu + sigma*P.randn(10000)
x1 = mu + sigma*P.randn(7000)
x2 = mu + sigma*P.randn(3000)

P.figure()

colors = ['crimson', 'burlywood', 'chartreuse']
labels = ['Crimson', 'Burlywood', 'Chartreuse']
n, bins, patches = P.hist([x0,x1,x2], 10, histtype='bar',
                          color=colors, label=labels)

P.legend()
P.show()
---------------------------------



On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Eric Firing <ef...@ha...> wrote:
> Jeff Klukas wrote:
>>
>> When plotting multiple data with one Axes.hist call, the method's
>> interface allows you to specify a list of labels to the 'label' kwarg
>> to distinguish between the datasets.  To get different colors,
>> however, you cannot give a list of colors to 'color'; instead, you
>> have to leave out the 'color' kwarg and change the color cycle.
>>
>> Is there any reason why the color kwarg can't work like label?  I
>> spent an hour or two trying to debug a script before I realized that
>> 'color' wasn't being interpreted as I expected.  I realize that there
>> is some ambiguity since a color argument can be an rgb or rgba
>> sequence.  My proposal would be that 'color' would be interpreted as a
>> list of distinct colors only when multiple datasets are given as input
>> and len(color) equals the number of datasets.
>>
>> I find it hard to imagine a case where you would want to set all
>> datasets to be the same color, so I don't think the ambiguity would be
>> a major issue.  I would be happy to write and submit an implementation
>> if others think this is a reasonable idea.
>
> Sounds good to me.  I agree that it makes no sense to have to set the color
> cycle for hist (although using the color cycle as a default is reasonable),
> and I think it is just an artifact of the way hist has evolved.
>
> Eric
>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jeff
>>
>> || Jeff Klukas, Research Assistant, Physics
>> || University of Wisconsin -- Madison
>> || jeff.klukas@gmail | jeffyklukas@aim | jeffklukas@skype
>> || http://www.hep.wisc.edu/~jklukas/
>>
>