I was ready to produce a polar plot and, unless I'm missing
> something this doesn't seem to be a feature. Looking at the
> list archives and the future direction on the website I
> can't find the word "polar" anywhere. Is this feature there
> in some non-obvious way or is not implemented. Are there
> any plans?
I guess it's a good sign when you are surprised *not to find
something* rather than the converse 
There are no polar plots currently. This should be documented on the
goals page - thanks for reminding me.
matplotlib development is driven by what I need and what people ask
for. Noone has asked for polar plots yet, but since there were two
requests today, I guess it's officially on the list of things to do.
If anyone else is interested in taking a stab at this, let me know.
The relevant classes are axis.Axis, transforms.Transform and
axes.Axes.
JDH