problem with savefig and PS files

followed what you suggested, everything was fine until the

    > 'grep' : for some obscure reason every new install produced
    > an empty (0 byte) backend_ps.py file (I think this may have
    > come from a previously interrupted 'build'). I therefore
    > erased the original matplotlib source dir (as well as the
    > installed ones), and redetared the archive starting from
    > scratch.. It works...

Oh -- both Darren and I forgot to suggest rm -rf "build" in addition
to site-packages/matplotlib. This is, however, suggested in
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/faq.html#FAILURE

   The first thing to try is to remove site-packages/matplotlib and
   reinstall. If you are running the windows installer or using some
   other package, that is all you need to do. If you are compiling
   matplotlib yourself, you also need to remove the build subdirectory
   of the matplotlib src tree you are compiling from. It is not enough
   to do python setup.py clean. Try rebuilding and reinstalling
   matplotlib after removing these two directories and see if that
   helps. If

Glad you found and fixed the problem!

JDH