From: Matthew B. <mat...@gm...> - 2011-02-26 18:12:27
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Hi, On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 4:30 AM, Michiel de Hoon <mjl...@ya...> wrote: >> In any case it appears that with the exception of Tkinter, it may take a >> long time before interactive mpl backends can be used with py3k. > > The MacOSX backend has already been ported to Py3k (at least the C part of it, which is the largest and most difficult part of it), though I won't be able to test it until the rest of matplotlib has been ported. > >> 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). > > Sometimes I wonder if it is better to retire the MacOSX backend. When it was first introduced, it was much faster (depending on what you wanted to draw) because of how its event loop is organized. By now the other backends use the same event loop strategy, and as far as I know there is no significant difference in speed compared to e.g. the TkAgg backend. The remaining advantage of the MacOSX backend is that it does not rely on other toolkits, and therefore it is easier to compile and use if something changes (e.g., when a new version of OS X comes out, or when compiling for 64-bits, or when Py3K comes out). Still, it needs some maintenance work, and it is hard to keep up. > Opinions, anybody? Seconding Jeff - I use the MacOSX backend too - was very grateful not to have to install the other toolkits or suffer ugliness. So, I'm also grateful... Best, Matthew |