Re: [Matplotlib-users] finding the bounding box of an arbitrary artist

[Michael M. F. <mic...@gm...>]

On 7 Oct 2011, at 4:56 PM, Daniel Hyams wrote:

> I'm wanting to highlight the artist under the cursor with a  
> transparent Rectangle patch.  To do this, I have very, roughly, in a  
> mouse motion handler,
>
> under = self.figure.hitlist(ev)
> if under:
>    artist = under[0]
>    bbox = artist.get_window_extent()
>    highlight =  
> matplotlib 
> .patches 
> .Rectangle 
> (xy 
> = 
> bbox.min,width=bbox.width,height=bbox.height,alpha=0.2,color='yellow')
>    # further code to blit the last captured graph region with  
> highlight drawn on top
>
> The main problem is that all artists don't implement  
> get_window_extent(); a Text object does, and a legend object does,  
> but the Axis objects do not.
>
> So is there a general way to get the bounding box of an artist?

Did you ever find a way to get the bounding box of an artist?  I could  
use this too.

Michael.