backend compatibility

Thanks a lot John, to my surprise, the example above

    > worked perfectly, but if I try that same thing with the
    > gtk backend it crashes at the very moment I issue the
    > command "from matplotlib.matlab import *" It must really
    > be a problem with gtk, I use pygtk 2.0 on a mandrake 9.1
    > linux system. Other apps that use pygtk run without
    > problems...

What version of pygtk are you running? matplotlib requires 1.99.16.
don't know about Mandrake, but Redhat 9 comes with 1.99.14, so it is
possible you don't have a recent enough version of pygtk. If you
would be willing to install pygtk-2.0.0 (it's just a 'python setup.py
install') and let me know if you can run the simple_plot.py example
from the command line, and then let me know if the crash goes away in
pycrust and Boaconstructor.

  ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/python/v2.0/pygtk-2.0.0.tar.gz

    > Why do you have to import matplotlib and matplotlib.matlab
    > separately? the first import is not a problem on my
    > system. only the second crashes gtk-based tools (it
    > crashes Boa-constructor too)

This is the way to select among various backends (PS, GD, GTK, WX)
that the matlab module uses. It can only use one, so you have to
select it before you import the matplotlib.matlab module.

JDH