Re: [matplotlib-devel] Color Parsing Bug

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

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 6:36 PM, T J <tj...@gm...> wrote:

> There seems to be an issue with how arguments are parsed when it comes
> to determining the color of a line.  Generally, it seems that 'c'
> takes precedence over 'color'. However, this precedence seems to
> change with the number of passed kwargs.
>
>
Yeah, there is a bit of a can of worms here.  I suspect that part of the
issue has to do with dictionaries not guaranteeing order, but I can't
figure out where that would happen, though.  In the plot handling code, we
are explicitly looking for the "color" kwarg, never the 'c' kwarg.  It is
over in the Line2D class that the "c" kwarg ever gets obtained.  In that
situation, what is likely happening is that the plot() code creates the
Line2D object, passing the "color" kwarg that it extracted, and any other
kwargs to the Line2D constructor (such as the 'c' kwarg).  My guess is that
the whole aliasing system is rather ad-hoc, and actually doesn't have
explicit precedence because it was never intended for both kwargs to appear
at the same time.

Could you file an issue on the github tracker about this?

Thank you,
Ben Root