Re: [Matplotlib-users] Keyword Parameters

[Perry G. <pe...@st...>]

On Feb 23, 2005, at 1:28 AM, Greg Novak wrote:
> Gripe #3 is related to interactive windows when Python and the X11
> server are connected by a slow link.  All of the interactive backends
> I've used for matplotlib look great, but render very slowly in this
> situation b/c they're sending all the pixel data.  Since most plots
> consist of a few lines, a bit of text, and a few dots, it'd be nice if
> the windows rendered quickly over slow connections.  For example,
> Gnuplot runs very well in this configuration.  I realize that this
> doesn't invovle matplotlib per se, I just wanted to throw it out there
> as a concern.
>
This is a consequence of how most of the interactive backends are 
implemented. Since matplotlib is using agg to render graphics for them, 
all updates to graphs mean a new image must be transmitted to the 
window. If it is a remote window, that update is going to cost. There 
may be ways of improving the backends so that not the whole window 
needs to be updated, but I have a feeling that isn't going to yield a 
big improvement in many cases (a new plot of points means changes over 
most of the image even if it can be characterized by a relatively small 
number of points and labels). I don't see any great solution to this 
(maybe John has some good ideas). I pointed this out as a consequence 
of going this way before it was done (and I recommended going this way 
:-). Implementing the backends using their built in plotting commands 
may be a way around this, but it means having much higher maintenance 
costs for backends and lots of annoying capability mismatches (some 
backends don't support rotated text, alpha blending, etc.)

Perry