Re: [matplotlib-devel] ANN matplotlib-0.61.0

[Fernando P. <Fer...@co...>]

John Hunter wrote:
> What's new in matplotlib-0.61.0 - 

>  * You can put a .matplotlibrc file in a dir to override the one in
>    your HOME dir.  If you have a project, say a book, and you want to
>    make a bunch of images with the same look and feel for the book,
>    you can place a custom rc file in the code dir for that book and
>    this won't affect the configs you use for normal, interactive use.

Just a question/suggestion on this.  Is there any user-available function to 
load matplotlibrc files?  Instead of relying on .files (hidden from normal ls 
calls), it would be nice if _any_ file could live in a directory defining this 
configuration.  One could then in a script for a specific project write:

load_rc('myproject_matplolibrc')
...

This would even allow you to cleanly maintain multiple rc files in the same 
directory, in case you want.  I also think it serves better the 'explicit is 
better than implicit' python mantra: I'd even prefer NOT to have silent 
loading of .matplotlibrc files beyond that in ~/, since this would mean that 
matplotlib will behave differently depending on where you start it.  I think 
this can be confusing.

Just having an available loadrc() routine would solve the surprise issue, 
allow multiple rc files per directory (for interactive and publication work, 
for example), and the user cost would remain minimal: just a simple function 
call to do the loading.

Just some ideas...

Best,

f