Simplifying code

Most, if not all, np., plt., ax., fig., and mpl. can be safely removed if importing * directly in the main name namespace. Currently there are so many useless repetitions, IMHO.

from matplotpib.pylab import *

would make things much cleaner and simple.

[mdehoon]

I fully agree with @Atcold here. Usually the first thing I do after starting Python is

>>> from pylab import *

I appreciate that the prefixes np., plt., ax., fig., and mpl. have the advantage of showing specifically which module or object is being used, but in practice I find it only matters when I am writing a script to be used for all eternity. In daily life, I almost never use the prefixes, and I would find it annoying if I had to use them all the time.

[timhoffm]

In summary, matplotlib’s pylab gives you an interactive calculator.

On a side note, I don’t think this is the responsibility of a visualization library. If designed from scatch, that would be a separate library. Even though, we don’t recommend pylab it will stay.

Then, sure, it can also be used for scripting. But I don’t think it’s its primary usage. And the cheat sheet is targeted for the first group of users, IMHO. Programmers check the API or StackOverflow.

The cheat sheet is targeted at all users of matplotlib. It’s also much simpler for pylab users to ignore prefixes in the cheat sheet than for others to guess them if they weren’t there.