Idea: Matplotlib Backend Mode

Hi! I found this library and it’s very interesting. Thanks for the great library.

One immediate thought I have is that its programmatic interface is quite independent. I wish I would be able to use the same matplotlib code for drawing plots, so implementing a matplotlib backend or (some sort of wrapper) would be great.

The API showcased in https://github.com/piccolomo/plotext/blob/master/readme/subplots.md follows the legacy plt. matplotlib API, which I think is bad and should be discouraged.

[piccolomo]

Hi @wookayin,

I have worked on your request and added the function from_matplotlib() function, in the new version 5.1, available only on GitHub for now, using:

pip install git+https://github.com/piccolomo/plotext

The function is described here and you have been credited here.

Any feedback or double test is appreciated 😃.

Thanks and all the best, Savino

[wookayin]

I looked a bit into how this could be realized, and a tentative conclusion is due to much design differences this would not be easily possible.

The matplotlib backend API requires implementation of figure manager (which is straightforward) and renderer. The renderer is supposed to draw graphics being rendered from matplotlib-internal data structures (such as Figure, SubplotAxes). Mostly the renderer would need to implement how to draw path, image, and text, but the current implementation of plotext has nothing to do with matplotlib internal APIs and has their own replication of similar concepts. So writing an adapter or bridge is not straightforward (unless a huge refactoring and modularization happens); this library is designed to do simple plotting jobs based on its own interface and internal data structures (seemingly similar but different a lot), and the core implementation of TUI drawing is strongly coupled with those APIs which are not compatible with matplotlib.

I will close this issue for now, but if you have any other thoughts I’d be happy to discuss more.