[Matplotlib-users] Date demos from examples fail to run

[Delbert D. F. <iq...@so...>]

I am evaluating matplotlib for its date handling for plotting time 
series produced by a unsteady-flow simulation package.  
I downloaded the Debian package from http://anakonda.altervista.org/debian
because I could not get apt-get to get the package after modifying
my sources.list.  

However, dpkg did not complain about any missing packages and 
several test cases worked well.  However, none of the following 
examples would run

date_demo1.py  
    error---cannot import date2num, num2date

date_demo2.py
    error--cannot import name MONDAY

date_demo_convert.py
    error--cannot import DayLocator, HourLocator

date_demo_rrule.py
    error--cannot import name YEARLY

After some time checking docs and looking at the various
*.py files involved, I noticed that none of the dateutl files 
were on my system and neither were the pytz files.  
The documentation on the web site clearly states that 
the dateutil files are included in the package but somehow 
they got missed in the 0.64-1 release downloaded from the
site given above.  

After downloading and installing these two packages all 
but date_demo_rrule.py completed properly.  
The error in this case was an unknown name "rand".
A check of the Python Library reference stated it was
obsolete.  I replaced it with random.randrange but 
got another error, an assertion error apparently on 
the y value.  Being somewhat new to Python and 
even newer to matplotlib I gave up on that demo. 

Perhaps someone else can test date_demo_rrule.py
and see what happens.  It is always a good thing when
demos in fact run!

I am also testing under MS Windows and the dateutils
and pytz files came with that install but none of the 
example files came.  Not sure why they are not 
included in the *.exe installer. 

I am using Python 2.3.4
matplotlib   0.64-1
Libranet 2.8.1
Kernel 2.6.9

                                      Delbert Franz