Re: [matplotlib-devel] subtle design difference with Wx backend from others

[Chris B. <chr...@no...>]

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Eric Firing <ef...@ha...> wrote:

> On 2014/11/23, 12:18 PM, Benjamin Root wrote:
> > Reading through the backend_wx.py code, I noticed a small deviation from
> > the other interactive backends. All other
> > new_figure_manager_given_figure() separately creates a canvas and
> > manager object (which, in turn, creates the window object) and hooks
> > them all up. The manager would handle all window responsibilities such
> > as creation/destruction and sizing. However, for the WX backend, this
> > function just creates a FigureFrameWx object, which is the window
> > widget. This object also becomes responsible for creating the canvas and
> > the manager.
> >
> > This setup seems a bit backwards to me, but I am not entirely sure. It
> > is definitely different. Does anybody know if it is merely a remnant of
> > older designs (I think WX was the first backend)? What are the
> > limitations of this approach, if any? Is there any interest in
> > normalizing this backend design with the others (or vice versa)?
>
> In general, making the backends as similar as possible (and factoring
> out as much as possible) is good; but actually messing around with these
> things can be time consuming, painful, and hazardous.  It's hard to test
> with all the different platforms and versions.
>

Last I looked, and I doubt much has changed, the wx back-end required a
fair bit of love -- there was a lot of extra refresh() calls being made in
various places, most of which were unnecessary most of the time  -- i.e. a
bunch of extra refreshes. I've been hoping for literally years to find the
time to go in an clean that up, but not yet....

So -- if someone can dedicate some time to clean up the wx back-end, then
it wold make sense to look into normalizing this, too. But I agree with
Eric, this is likely to be a significant job --  wouldn't tough unless
your'e ready to commit to some real work.

If it ain't broke.....

-Chris

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Chr...@no...