Re: [matplotlib-devel] Incorporating TikZ into Matplotlib

[Eric F. <ef...@ha...>]

On 2015/05/13 9:36 AM, Neil Girdhar wrote:
> I don't know matplotlib well enough (yet) to know what the change would
> consist of.
>
> I suggest you take a look at the beautiful tikz manual:
> http://pgf.sourceforge.net/pgf_CVS.pdf

Very helpful, thank you.

>
> The arrows.meta on page 201–212 are really well-designed and beautiful.
>
> Compare this with matplotlib's custom arrows:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16968007/custom-arrow-style-for-matplotlib-pyplot-annotate
>
> How do I make tikz's arrowheads available for all backends?
>

My guess offhand is that this is a matter of using the mpl API.  I don't 
think we would want to add all of these types and options to the mpl 
core; but a toolkit might be ideal for this.  The mpl API, which 
generates the same results for all backends, is quite complete and 
flexible.  Things like arrowheads are Patch objects, and you can specify 
any path you want.  The main trick is figuring out how to handle 
transforms--what kind of coordinates should the path be specifying?  How 
should things scale as a figure is reshaped and resized?

For many of these types you could also use mpl Line2D objects, for which 
several properties including cap style can be specified.  Not all of the 
TikZ options would be available, but perhaps enough.

Eric