Re: [Matplotlib-users] Explicitly clearing Matplotlib/Pylab figure buffers

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

On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Eric Firing <ef...@ha...> wrote:

> On 2013/08/23 3:55 AM, Kari Aliranta wrote:
> > Hello, fellow Matplotlib users,
> >
> >
> > I'm embedding some Matplotlib figures into GUI (PyQt4) windows or widget
> > canvases using qt4agg as the backend. I'm having problems with these
> > figures popping up any time when some other part of the program calls
> > pyplot.show().
>
> Generally, when embedding, one simply does not use the pyplot interface
> at all, so this sort of problem does not arise.  Is there any reason why
> you can't use this approach?
> >
> > How do you avoid this showing of previous figures? Is there some hidden
> > buffer where the figures go? If there is, what is the way to clear this
> > buffer, or preferably avoid putting figures in this buffer altogether?
> > I'd be happy to handle these figures as simple individual objects.
>
> To remove a figure created by pyplot, use pyplot.close(fig); but still,
> trying to use the pyplot interface for anything more complicated than
> direct interactive use and simple non-interactive scripts is likely to
> cause more problems than it solves. It's just not what pyplot is
> designed for.
>
> Eric
>

I am wondering if the problem being described here is one where someone
creates a module to do some particular thing using matplotlib, and someone
else has the script that is using pyplot and that module. I am fairly
certain that the pure OO approach should still work for the code in the
module without interference from the script's usage of pyplot, though, but
I am not 100% certain.

Cheers!
Ben Root