Re: [matplotlib-devel] What's the status of the py3k branch?

[Benjamin R. <ben...@ou...>]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 8:01 PM, John Hunter <jd...@gm...> wrote:

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> On Feb 25, 2011, at 7:00 PM, Christoph Gohlke <cg...@uc...> wrote:
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> > Are PIL and PyGTK holding back matplotlib for Python 3
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> Not at all. Both are optional dependencies. Mpl's hard external
> dependencies are python, zlib, libpng, freetype and numpy.  With those you
> get the agg, pdf, ps and svg backends.   Various GUI tooolkits are optional,
> as is PIL, which provides some image reading capabilities and image
> comparisons for the unit tests.
>

While the GUI toolkits are optional, practically speaking, they are a
requirement for many (if not most) users.

The damn-ing part about the backends is that many users use only one of the
GUI backends, and if that one is broken for them, they believe that
matplotlib is completely broken.  (Evidence: the user who complained that
matplotlib was not designed correctly when it turned out that the macosx
backend didn't support (non-?)interactive mode).

PyGTK not being updated for py3k is a heart-breaker for me.  I don't want to
even imagine what sort of pain in the butt it is going to be to program
using PyGObject introspection (yeah, that sounds like fun...).

Ben Root