Data directory

Hi - I installed matplotlib into an alternative directory

    > (using --home=/usr/local/python/python-2.3-FC2).

    > I edited my .matplotlibrc file to set the data directory
    > to /usr/local/python/python-2.3-FC2/share/matplotlib, but
    > it doesn't seem to work:

I assume /usr/local/python/python-2.3-FC2/share/matplotlib exists and
contains, for example, the *.ttf, *.afm, etc files ?

Are you sure the rc file you are editing is being found and loaded.
Where are you placing the rc file? The search order for rc is

     * current working dir
     * environ var MATPLOTLIBRC
     * HOME/.matplotlibrc
     * MATPLOTLIBDATA/.matplotlibrc

    > (BTW the bottom appears to be a bug - report_error should
    > be given 3 arguments)

Yes, this is fixed in CVS, thanks.

    > I've also tried specifiying the
    > /usr/local/python/python-2.3-FC2/ and
    > /usr/local/python/python-2.3-FC2/share, but neither work.

    > Is there any reason why the location of the data directory
    > can't be put into matplotlib when it is installed? This
    > would be much more convenient. It would also be nice if
    > matplotlib can find the location of .matplotlibrc if there
    > isn't one in the user's directory. When sing an alternate
    > installation directory, it can't find one at the moment.

Sorry for all your troubles. There are a couple of additional hints
that may help you get your environment configured properly. First,
run a test script, eg examples/simple_plot.py with the
--verbose-helpful flag. This will give you information at runtime
about what resources matplotlib is loading, eg what data path
matplotlib is using, what rc file etc.

As indicated above, there are two additional things you can do to help
matplotlib find it's data files. One, you can place an rc file in
your working directory if you don't want to use a home directory for
it. Secondly, you can set the environment variable MATPLOTLIBDATA as
described at http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/installing.html.

Hopefully with some combination of the extra ways to point matplotlib
to its data files and the extra diagnostic information from the
verbose flag, you can get this working.

Assuming /usr/local/python/python-2.3-FC2/share/matplotlib exists and
contains the files you referred to above, this is the dir that you
would set MATPLOTLIBDATA to point to.

If you find the magic combination, please post or for future googlers.
Or if you have any suggestions for documentation improvement let me
know.

JDH