Hi everybody,
For those of you that are using the gtk, gtkcairo, or gtkagg backends:
Today pygtk version 2.15.0 became available, which is the first pygtk that can be used interactively from both python and ipython. If you're using ipython, be sure to wait for release 0.10.0 of ipython before upgrading to pygtk 2.15.0; older versions of ipython may not work correctly. If you're using regular python, you can install pygtk 2.15.0, set interactive to True in matplotlibrc, and you should be all set. Unfortunately, this won't work with IDLE; this is because of the lack of event loop support in Python itself.
Enjoy!
--Michiel.