update to: I can not get matplotlib to work on a windows xp professional machine

John, I tried using TkAgg as the backend and it raised

    > a value error Unrecognized backend error. The

Perhaps you entered it in wrong -- it should be "TkAgg" as you typed
above but if you got this error I'm guessing you made a typo in your
rc file. Create a simple script

from pylab import subplot, show
ax = subplot(111)
ax.plot([1,2,3])
show()

and run it from the command line with

  > python myscript.py --verbose-helpful

This will report information about which backend you've selected
etc... It will also tell you which rc file is loaded. If you
encounter further errors please post this output along with your
explanation.

Sorry for the troubles -- you're almost there!
JDH

John Hunter wrote:

Perhaps you entered it in wrong -- it should be "TkAgg" as you typed
above but if you got this error I'm guessing you made a typo in your
rc file.

You can also put a matplotlib.use("TkAgg") in your script which might be an easier way to test different back-ends than editing the rc file:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("TkAgg")
from pylab import subplot, show
ax = subplot(111)
ax.plot([1,2,3])
show()

···

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