matplotlib ignoring .matplotlibrc?

I installed the matplotlib-1.52.win32-py2.3 binary on

    > python23 (Enthought). I don't want to install a lot of
    > extra packages so I found the existing .matplotlibrc in
    > C:\Python23\share\matplotlib and modified the backend to
    > "backend : TkAgg". But when I try to import matplotlib it
    > appears to be still looking for the default Gtk backend.

    > I noticed that sys.path did not contain
    > C:\Python23\share\matplotlib so I tried adding it. Still
    > no luck.

It has nothing to do with sys.path, so you can safely ignore this.

    > Here's the error message:

    > IDLE 1.0 ==== No Subprocess ====
            ^^^

Ahh the golden piece of information. Todd Miller has reported that
idle does not seem to respect matplotlibrc. At this point we have no
idea why. We'll try to get this figured out ASAP!

As a test case, try to run a matplotlib script from the DOS prompt

C:> python somefile.py

and see if TkAgg launches. If so, we can be fairly sure it's idle.
Probably just double clicking on one of the examples from the zip
distribution will be enough, but you lose the traceback this way if
there is an error.

Let me know,
JDH