Re: [Matplotlib-users] how to make matplotlib faster?

[Chris B. <Chr...@no...>]

Arnd Baecker wrote:
> P.S.: I agree on the speed issues. Unfortunately
>       most of the newer python graphics packages tend to be
>       slower than older packages.

I think this has two reasons:

1) They are written more in Python, rather than wrapping an existing 
library written in C or whatever.

2) They often are back-end independent. This introduces an extra layer 
at every drawing command, and makes it difficult to take advantage of 
possible optimizations available for a given back end, like Arnd has 
done for his stuff.

One thing that could help here is if all the drawing commands were 
"vectorized". This would mean that rather than asking the back-end to 
draw one primitive at a time, a whole set could be passed in. This would 
allow the back end to possibly optimize the drawing of the set. An 
example is wxPython's DC.DrawXXXList() methods. These methods take a 
python sequence of drawing primitives, and loop through that sequence in 
C++ code. It makes a huge difference when drawing simple objects, like 
points or line segments.

I haven't looked closely at the matplotlib code to see if this can be 
done, but it could make a difference.

-Chris


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Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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Chr...@no...