[Matplotlib-users] python question from matlab user

[Jody K. <jk...@uv...>]

Hi All,

Sorry to ask a dumb python newbie question, but the problem arose while reading the matplotlib documentation, and an hour or so on the internet didnt' help, so I felt it was fair-ish game to post here. 

In http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/pylab_examples/customize_rc.html it says:
"""
If you like to work interactively, and need to create different sets
of defaults for figures (eg one set of defaults for publication, one
set for interactive exploration), you may want to define some
functions in a custom module that set the defaults, eg

def set_pub():
    rc('font', weight='bold')    # bold fonts are easier to see

Then as you are working interactively, you just need to do

>>> set_pub()
"""

Which I thought was great, because I'd like to have some presets for different journals.  However, saving the def into a file (jmkfigure.py) and calling 

from jmkfigure import *

set_pub()

yields the error: "NameError: global name 'rc' is not defined" 

I tried importing matplotlib and rc into jmkfigure.py, but to no avail.  

I appreciate this is a scoping issue with python, but I can't figure out how to set rc from within an external module.

Thanks for any help,

Cheers,   Jody