Re: [matplotlib-devel] windows immediately close after show()

[Darren D. <dsd...@gm...>]

On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 5:57 PM, Eric Firing <ef...@ha...> wrote:
> On 04/04/2011 10:24 AM, Darren Dale wrote:
>> When I run some of the examples in pylab_examples, like
>> simple_plot.py, the call to show() yields a window that immediately
>> closes. This is with either the v1.0.x or master branches on OS X with
>> python 2.7 and the qt4 backend, with interactive=True in matplotlibrc.
>> When I change interactive to False, the window remains open until I
>> close it.
>>
>> Is interactive=True not supported for scripts anymore?
>
> After testing and thinking a bit, I think the answer is that it never
> was, unless you are in an environment like ipython.  Certainly it hasn't
> been any time recently.  A script run from the command line exits when
> it reaches the last line; if nothing blocks, then it will immediately
> close the window and exit.  This is not backend-dependent or
> OS-dependent--it is just the way scripts work.

I thought I remembered there being two separate issues: whether or not
to block, and whether a plot is updated after each command or
rendering is deferred until show() is called. Things may have changed
when IPython pulled the threading monkeypatches, more likely my memory
is bad. Your explanation makes sense. Thanks.

Darren