Matplotlib Startup

We’ll begin documenting the configuration for matplotlib and how the built-in matplotlib.pyplot API can be utilized for IPython’s configuration.

In [1]: import matplotlib as mpl

In [2]: mpl.pyplot.rc
Out[2]: <function matplotlib.pyplot.rc(group, **kwargs)>

In [3]: # pdoc mpl.pyplot.rc

Where the %pdoc magic produces:

Class docstring:

Set the current rc params. group is the grouping for the rc, e.g., for lines.linewidth the group is lines, for axes.facecolor, the group is axes, and so on. Group may also be a list or tuple of group names, e.g., (xtick, ytick). kwargs is a dictionary attribute name/value pairs, e.g.,:

rc('lines', linewidth=2, color='r')

sets the current rc params and is equivalent to:

rcParams['lines.linewidth'] = 2
rcParams['lines.color'] = 'r'

The following aliases are available to save typing for interactive users:

Alias	Property
‘lw’	‘linewidth’
‘ls’	‘linestyle’
‘c’	‘color’
‘fc’	‘facecolor’
‘ec’	‘edgecolor’
‘mew’	‘markeredgewidth’
‘aa’	‘antialiased’

Thus you could abbreviate the above rc command as:

rc('lines', lw=2, c='r')

Note you can use python’s kwargs dictionary facility to store dictionaries of default parameters. e.g., you can customize the font rc as follows:

font = {'family' : 'monospace',
        'weight' : 'bold',
        'size'   : 'larger'}

rc('font', **font)  # pass in the font dict as kwargs

This enables you to easily switch between several configurations. Use matplotlib.style.use('default') or rcdefaults() to restore the default rc params after changes.

Call docstring:

Call self as a function.

Well that’s neat!

So fun fact: If you write a print() statement in a code-block it’ll generate error as no code is saved and you essentially created an empty block.

But running %pdoc will actually output a classes docstring to your terminal in the middle of a sphinx build!