Matplotlib

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matplotlib

Original author(s)	John Hunter
Stable release	0.99.1 / 2009-09-21; 2 months ago
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Plotting
License	matplotlib licence
Website	matplotlib.sf.net

Matplotlib is a plotting library for the Python programming language and its NumPy numerical mathematics extension. It provides an object-oriented API which allows plots to be embedded into applications using generic GUI toolkits, like wxPython, Qt, or GTK. There is also a procedural "pylab" interface based on a state machine (like OpenGL), designed to closely resemble that of MATLAB.

Matplotlib is written and maintained primarily by John Hunter, and is distributed under a BSD-style license.

Currently, Matplotlib has support for Python versions 2.4 through 2.6.^[1]

Contents 1 Comparison with MATLAB 2 Example plots 3 Related projects 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Comparison with MATLAB

The pylab interface makes Matplotlib easy to learn for experienced MATLAB users, resulting in a viable alternative for many MATLAB users as a teaching tool for numerical mathematics and signal processing.

Some of the advantages of Python+NumPy+Matplotlib over MATLAB include:

• Based on Python, a full-featured modern object-oriented programming language suitable for large-scale software development
• Suitable for fast scripting, including CGI scripts
• Free, open source, no license servers
• Native SVG support

[edit] Example plots

[edit] Related projects

• GNU Octave
• Chaco
• wxPython (module wx.lib.plot.py)
• Biggles
• DISLIN
• Gnuplot-py [1]
• PyPlotter – compatible with Jython
• PyX
• ReportLab
• SciPy (modules plt and gplt)
• PyCha – libcairo implementation
• PLplot – provides also Python bindings

[edit] References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2009)

[edit] External links

• Matplotlib Home Page
• Matplotlib Cookbook

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