advice on writing an application

You need to understand that this is simply how free software works: when
someone needs something badly enough _for themselves_, they get off their butt
and write it. Then it's available for all to use (if released). I did that
for interactive mpl support over a year ago, so that's why it's been
prominently displayed for a while (and this _is_ useful to a lot of people,
since quick-and-dirty interactive data analysis is a very common task). Now
you guys are doing the same for WX tools, and that's fantastic. I'm sure
John will advertise it equally prominently.

So relax, nobody is trying to be misleading about anything, we're all here
simply working on what each of us needs, so the evolution process is rather
inhomogeneous.

Perhaps I hadn't been clear. I'm not complaining of features missing. I'm just saying that, for example, the docs are misleading, because they focus on pylab when they would have to show both pylab and the OO interface. Pylab is a wonderful feature of MPL, but it's not the only one. I'm relaxed, I just feel that it's quite sad to focus only on pylab when users would like to know about the beautiful programming interface that already exists and that lies beneath.

m.

massimo sandal wrote:

So relax, nobody is trying to be misleading about anything, we're all
here simply working on what each of us needs, so the evolution process is
rather inhomogeneous.

Perhaps I hadn't been clear. I'm not complaining of features missing. I'm
just saying that, for example, the docs are misleading, because they focus
on pylab when they would have to show both pylab and the OO interface.

The docs don't "have" to show anything: they are as complete as the people who wrote them have had the time/energy/interest/ability to make them.

It may well be true that the OO interface is under-documented (I don't know). If that is the case, then a worthwhile contribution woudl be to write such documentation, or to organize the existing one better. The mpl wiki cookbook is there for all to contribute, so you don't even need to bottleneck on John's time or resources. A good set of OO pages/tutorials on the wiki, with examples and summaries of WXMPL/MPlot/whatever would (if it doesn't exist already) be an excellent contribution that users can make.

John has already explicitly said that he'd like to see wxmpl/mplot included, so he's obviously open to contributions on this front.

Cheers,

f