Using `hexbin` with `edgecolors = 'none'`

Development matplotlib-devel
1

I’m drawing hexbins with alpha < 1 and get dark lines at the bin edges. It turns out that setting edgecolors = 'none' sets the edge color to be the same as the face color, as mentioned in the docstring:

If 'none', draws the edges in the same color as the fill color.

This is the default, as it avoids unsightly unpainted pixels

between the hexagons.

This behavior is a bit weird, since setting colors to ‘none’ usually makes the element invisible. Wouldn’t it be more consistent to let ‘none’ be passed to the PolyCollection (which draws the hexbins), such that edges aren’t drawn. Then, to maintain the current behavior, change the default to ‘face’. (Of course, this wouldn’t really maintain current behavior for code that explicitly passes edgecolors='none'.)

Also, if I let ‘none’ get passed to the PolyCollection, I don’t see the “unsightly unpainted pixels between the hexagons”. Is this just a system-dependent artifact, or is it an outdated docstring?

Thanks,

-Tony

2

Just to clarify, here’s an example of how I think hexbin should behave:

https://github.com/tonysyu/matplotlib/commit/39e28540d30a55c18975533fe3625c47506c5908

-Tony

···

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Tony Yu <tsyu80@…149…> wrote:

I’m drawing hexbins with alpha < 1 and get dark lines at the bin edges. It turns out that setting edgecolors = 'none' sets the edge color to be the same as the face color, as mentioned in the docstring:

If 'none', draws the edges in the same color as the fill color.

This is the default, as it avoids unsightly unpainted pixels

between the hexagons.

This behavior is a bit weird, since setting colors to ‘none’ usually makes the element invisible. Wouldn’t it be more consistent to let ‘none’ be passed to the PolyCollection (which draws the hexbins), such that edges aren’t drawn. Then, to maintain the current behavior, change the default to ‘face’. (Of course, this wouldn’t really maintain current behavior for code that explicitly passes edgecolors='none'.)

Also, if I let ‘none’ get passed to the PolyCollection, I don’t see the “unsightly unpainted pixels between the hexagons”. Is this just a system-dependent artifact, or is it an outdated docstring?

Thanks,

-Tony