I viewed matplotlib.svg in gqview (on Linux) and it looks
> like the icon image only uses about two thirds of the svg
> width and height, so the minimize icon ends up being too
> small.
Indeed. I fixed this in CVS (and a number of other fixes for SVG
including some layout problems, image support and font support).
There appears to be a problem with the svg lib gnome uses. For one
thing, the axes appear black even though the hex code is #ffffff.
This does not happen in mozilla with the adobe plugin or with batik.
It appears GNOME uses the same lib (unsurprisingly) because when I
minimize the figure I also get the black axes background.
JDH