Hi,
I recently found matplotlib and think it's _exactly_ what the python environment needs from the scientific perspective ... interactive plotting as good as (or better than) Matlab's, that also makes it easy for Matlab users to be converted. 
I'm very impressed in the effort-to-date. Unfortunately, other software I use forces me to stay with python2.2, and I'm having tremendous trouble building matplotlib for win32. Might someone have a pointer to a self-installing executable for matplotlib compiled against python2.2 that is a more recent version than v0.54.1??
Thanks! And cheers to all the developers of this package.
-best
Gary