backends

Development matplotlib-devel
#1

Ga?l> On Fri, Jul 07, 2006 at 03:46:01PM -0500, John Hunter wrote:
    >> Ideally, I would like to see PS, SVG, Agg and
    >> [Tk|GTK|WX|Qt|FLTK]Agg and no more. But I know that other
    >> people feel differently.

    Ga?l> pdf seems very important to me.

PDF is certainly an important document format, but it doesn't seem to
be widely used for figures. I often make pdf documents but
incorporate PNG figures into them (eg PDF latex). My backend list
above is not a list of backends that I think matplotlib should support
as much as it is a list of backends that I personally find useful and
would personally support even if noone else did. Any backend that is
supported by someone should remain in, even if they are the only one
using it, in my opinion. But most backends are not supported.

Only PS and Agg (and by extension all of the GTK* backends) support
all of matplotlib's features. This should give some indication of how
much work it is to develop a fully compliant backend, and why we have
an incentive to minimize the number of them.

JDH

#2

PDF has one important combination that neither PS nor png provide:
vector (hence, resolution independent) images with proper
transparency. I know SVG has that, but I don't know how well SVGs
embed in PDFs (last I tried, I couldn't make it work satisfactorily).

Cheers,

f

···

On 7/7/06, John Hunter <jdhunter@...5...> wrote:

    > On Fri, Jul 07, 2006 at 03:46:01PM -0500, John Hunter wrote:
    >> Ideally, I would like to see PS, SVG, Agg and
    >> [Tk|GTK|WX|Qt|FLTK]Agg and no more. But I know that other
    >> people feel differently.

    > pdf seems very important to me.

PDF is certainly an important document format, but it doesn't seem to
be widely used for figures. I often make pdf documents but
incorporate PNG figures into them (eg PDF latex). My backend list
above is not a list of backends that I think matplotlib should support
as much as it is a list of backends that I personally find useful and
would personally support even if noone else did. Any backend that is
supported by someone should remain in, even if they are the only one
using it, in my opinion. But most backends are not supported.

Only PS and Agg (and by extension all of the GTK* backends) support
all of matplotlib's features. This should give some indication of how
much work it is to develop a fully compliant backend, and why we have
an incentive to minimize the number of them.

#3

I would prefer to use pdf figures in my latex documents. They are smaller,
they support alpha blending, and unlike png they are scalable. Unfortunately,
most academic journals still request postscript files, but this may change
some day. Printers may eventually use pdf as their native format instead of
postscript.

Not that I am advocating adding more backends to mpl, just more
contributors. :slight_smile:

···

On Friday 07 July 2006 17:16, John Hunter wrote:

    > On Fri, Jul 07, 2006 at 03:46:01PM -0500, John Hunter wrote:
    >> Ideally, I would like to see PS, SVG, Agg and
    >> [Tk|GTK|WX|Qt|FLTK]Agg and no more. But I know that other
    >> people feel differently.

    > pdf seems very important to me.

PDF is certainly an important document format, but it doesn't seem to
be widely used for figures. I often make pdf documents but
incorporate PNG figures into them (eg PDF latex).

#4

I only use PDF figures. They are useful both in pdflatex (how I write), and play nice with all of the other mac utilities, in particular Keynote (how I present). They are generally small, and good looking at any size because of the vector graphics.

When converting MPL figures to pdf I usually just export to eps, then convert using ghostscript. In fact, if you open an eps file, OS X will do the conversion automagically, and open your new pdf in Preview. For publication quality (with annotations, etc), I export to eps, edit in Illustrator, and eventually export to pdf.

I’m not suggesting immediate development for a PDF backend (although if it came automatically with kiva, I would use it), I think eps+ghostscript is good enough for now. However, general pdf support is an important issue for me.

-Rob

···

On Jul 7, 2006, at 5:16 PM, John Hunter wrote:

PDF is certainly an important document format, but it doesn’t seem to

be widely used for figures.