INTRODUCTION

  matplotlib requires at a minimum python 2.3, numpy, libpng and
  freetype.  To get the most out of matplotlib, you will want to build
  some of the optional GUI and image extensions, discussed below.
  Matplotlib is known to work on linux, unix, win32 and OS X
  platforms.

  There are two kinds of matplotlib backends: vector based and raster
  based.  The vector based backends, SVG, PDF and PS, produce ASCII
  text output files *.svg, *.pdf and *.ps.  The core raster based
  renderer is the http://antigrain.com (agg) backend.  This is a high
  quality 2D library that supports fast antialiasing, alpha blending
  and much more.  If you want to produce PNGs or GUI images that
  support all of matplotlib's features, you should compile matplotlib
  with agg support and use one of the GUI agg backends: GTKAgg, WXAgg,
  TkAgg or FLTKAgg.

COMPILING

  You will need to have recent versions of freetype, libpng and zlib
  installed on your system.  If you are using a package manager, also
  make sure the devel versions of these packages are also installed
  (eg freetype-devel).

  matplotlib ships with a setup.cfg.template which you can use to
  customize the build process.  Copy it to setup.cfg if you need to
  customize something.  See that files for details of the parameters
  you can set.

  If you want to use a GUI backend, you will need either Tkinter,
  pygtk , wxPython or Qt installed on your system, from src or from a
  package manager including the devel packages.  You can choose which
  backends to enable by setting the flags in setup.cfg, but the default
  is to automatically detect your installed GUIs and build support for
  them.  If you later find that you did not have a GUI toolkit like
  pygtk installed when you built matplotlib, but now want it, you will
  need to install the toolkit and rebuild matplotlib.

  If you have installed prerequisites to nonstandard places and need
  to inform matplotlib where they are, edit setupext.py an add the
  base dirs to the 'basedir' dictionary entry for your sys.platform.
  Eg, if the header to some required library is in
  /some/path/include/somheader.h, put /some/path in the basedir list
  for your platform.


  Once you have everything above set to your liking, just do the usual
  thing

      python setup.py build
      python setup.py install

WINDOWS

  If you don't already have python installed, you may want to consider
  using the enthought edition of python, which has scipy, numpy, and
  wxpython, plus a lot of other goodies, preinstalled -
  http://www.enthought.com/python .  With the enthought edition of
  python + matplotlib installer, the following backends should work
  out of the box: agg, wx, wxagg, tkagg, ps, pdf and svg.

  For standard python installations, you will also need to install
  either numpy, in addition to the matplotlib installer.  On some
  systems you will also need to download msvcp71.dll library, which
  you can download from
  http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcp71 or other
  sites.  You will need to unzip the archive and drag the dll into
  c:\windows\system32

  All of the GUI backends run on windows, but TkAgg is probably the
  best for interactive use from the standard python shell or ipython.
  The windows installer (*.exe) on the download page contains all the
  code you need to get up and running.  However, there are many
  examples that are not included in the windows installer.  If you
  want to try the many demos that come in the matplotlib src
  distribution, download the zip file and look in the examples subdir.

  Important: There are known conflicts with some of the backends with
             some python IDEs such as pycrust, idle.  If you want to
             use matplotlib from an IDE, please consult
             http://matplotlib.sf.net/backends.html for compatibility
             information.  You will have the greatest likelihood of
             success if you run the examples from the command shell or
             by double clicking on them, rather than from an IDE.  If
             you are interactively generating plots, your best bet is
             TkAgg from the standard python shell or ipython.

DISTROS: (rpms, apt, fink, osx, freebsd, gentoo, etc)

  RPMS

    To build all the backends on a binary linux distro such as redhat,
    you need to install a number of the devel libs (and whatever
    dependencies they require), I suggest

      matplotlib core: zlib, zlib-devel, libpng, libpng-devel,
                       freetype, freetype-devel, freetype-utils

      gtk backend: gtk2-devel, gtk+-devel, pygtk2, glib-devel,
                   pygtk2-devel, gnome-libs-devel, pygtk2-libglade

      tk backend: tcl, tk, tkinter

  DEBIAN

   matplotlib is part of debian (and ubuntu) so you shoule be able to
   apt-get install it.

  FREEBSD

    http://www.freshports.org/math/py-matplotlib/

  Gentoo

    http://www.gentoo-portage.com/dev-python/matplotlib

  OS X

    All of the backends run on OS X.  You will need to install
    freetype2, libpng and zlib via fink or from src.  You will also
    need the base libraries for a given backend.  Eg, if you want to
    run TkAgg, you will need a python with Tkinter; if you want to use
    WxAgg, install wxpython.  See
    http://matplotlib.sf.net/backends.html for a more comprehensive
    discussion of the various backend requirements.  Edit setup.py to
    configure the backends you want to build as described above.

    Note when running a GUI backend in OSX, you should launch your
    programs with pythonw rather than python, or you may get
    nonresponsive GUIs.

  FINK

    fink users should use Jeffrey Whitaker's fink distribution, which
    supports the GTK, TkAgg, GTKAgg, PS, WX, WXAgg and Agg backends.
    http://fink.sourceforge.net/pdb/package.php/matplotlib-py23