Comments on: Installing MatPlotLib on Snow Leopard with MacPorts

By: Keith Kelly

Keith Kelly — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:27:39 +0000

I had done everything on this except the python_select steps and could not get it to work. Doing that got it to work, but I’d like to know why. Python reported that it couldn’t find matplotlib so I suspect that the package wasn’t in the search path. Does the MacPorts version of python have a different sys.path? Of course I now try to run the first example on the matplotlib website (http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/animation/animate_decay_tk_blit.html) and get an error:

File “animate_decay_tk_blit.py”, line 56, in
manager.window.after(100, run)
AttributeError: FigureManagerBase instance has no attribute ‘window’

Any idea what to do about that?

Thanks

By: Sriram Natarajan

Sriram Natarajan — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:13:42 +0000

Excellent, I had lot of issues getting matpltlib run on my Mac, this worked like a champ..Thankx a lot

By: Sho Goh

Sho Goh — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:38:42 +0000

dude, you are a life-saver. thanks a lot.

By: john

john — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:08:06 +0000

also, i noticed that i can now plot ok if i use ipython. if i use idle, then the plot does not work, it just hangs.

By: john

john — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:06:06 +0000

ok i found it, just a matter of running
>>> import matplotlib
>>> matplotlib.matplotlib_fname()

By: john

john — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:17:12 +0000

Jackson , where is this matplotlib/matplotlibrc file located ? i am unable to run any plots from matplotlib. im using all macports installation of python 2.6.5, matplotlib,libpng. but if i try to do any plotting i always get an error. im using mac 10.6.

By: Jackson Lee

Jackson Lee — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:20:34 +0000

Hi Daniel,
Thanks for this how-to! A couple of details I had to work out other users might want to know about:
1. I had to set the string ‘/opt/local/bin’ in front of my ‘/usr/local/bin’ in my .bash_profile to give MacPorts packages precedence. Otherwise, the Snow Leopard packaged version is executed.
2. I had to set the following line in my .matplotlib/matplotlibrc file to enable the MacOSX backend or graphics wouldn’t display:
‘backend : macosx’