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<h1>John Hunter (1968-2012)</h1>
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<p>
On August 28 2012, John D. Hunter, the creator of matplotlib, died
from complications arising from cancer treatment, after a brief but
intense battle with this terrible illness. John is survived by his
wife Miriam, his three daughters Rahel, Ava and Clara, his sisters
Layne and Mary, and his mother Sarah.</p>
<p>
If you have benefited from John's many contributions, please say
thanks in the way that would matter most to him. Please consider
making a donation to
the <a href="http://numfocus.org/johnhunter/">John Hunter Memorial
Fund</a>.</p>
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<h1>Introduction</h1>
<p>matplotlib is a python 2D plotting library which produces
publication quality figures in a variety of hardcopy formats and
interactive environments across platforms. matplotlib can be used
in python scripts, the python and <a
href="http://ipython.org">ipython</a> shell (ala
MATLAB<sup>®<a name="matlab" href="#ftn.matlab">*</a></sup>
or
Mathematica<sup>®<a name="mathematica"
href="#ftn.mathematica">†</a></sup>),
web application servers, and six graphical user
interface toolkits.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="users/screenshots.html"><img align="middle"
src="_static/logo_sidebar_horiz.png" border="0"
alt="screenshots"/></a></p>
<p>matplotlib tries to make easy things easy and hard things possible.
You can generate plots, histograms, power spectra, bar charts,
errorcharts, scatterplots, etc, with just a few lines of code.
For a sampling, see the <a href="users/screenshots.html">screenshots</a>, <a href="gallery.html">thumbnail</a> gallery, and
<a href="examples/index.html">examples</a> directory</p>
<p>For example, using <tt>"ipython --pylab"</tt> to provide an interactive
environment, to generate 10,000 gaussian random numbers and plot a
histogram with 100 bins, you simply need to
type</p>
<pre>
x = randn(10000)
hist(x, 100)</pre>
<p>For the power user, you have full control of line styles, font
properties, axes properties, etc, via an object oriented interface
or via a set of functions familiar to MATLAB users.</p>
<h1>Download</h1>
Matplotlib is available for
<a href="https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/downloads">download</a>.
<h1>Documentation</h1>
This is the documentation for matplotlib version 1.2.0.
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<p>Trying to learn how to do a particular kind of plot? Check out
the <a href="gallery.html">gallery</a>, <a href="examples/index.html">examples</a>,
or the <a href="api/pyplot_summary.html">list of plotting
commands</a>.</p>
<h4>Other learning resources</h4>
<ul>
<li>Sandro Tosi has a new book
<a href="http://www.packtpub.com/matplotlib-python-development/book?utm_source=matplotlib.sourceforge.net&utm_medium=link&utm_content=pod&utm_campaign=mdb_002124">Matplotlib
for python developers</a> also
at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Matplotlib-Python-Developers-Sandro-Tosi/dp/1847197906">amazon</a>.</li>
<li>Nicolas Rougier has
a <a href="http://www.loria.fr/~rougier/teaching/matplotlib/">beginner
tutorial.</a></li>
<li>Eric Jones gave
an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fp1zn5ao2M&feature=plcp">introductory
tutorial on Numpy and matplotlib</a> at SciPy 2012.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Need help?</h4>
<p>Check the <a href="faq/index.html">faq</a>,
the <a href="api/index.html">api</a> docs,
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=matplotlib-users">mailing
list archives</a>, and join the matplotlib
mailing <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=80706">lists</a>.
Check out the matplotlib questions
on <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matplotlib">stackoverflow</a>.
The <a href="search.html">search</a> tool searches all of
the documentation, including full text search of over 350 complete
examples which exercise almost every corner of matplotlib.</p>
<p>You can file bugs, patches and feature requests on the
github
<a href="https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues?sort=created&direction=desc&state=open">tracker</a>,
but it is a good idea to ping us on the mailing list too.</p>
<p>To keep up to date with what's going on in matplotlib, see
the <a href="users/whats_new.html">what's new
page</a>, the more detailed <a href="_static/CHANGELOG">changelog</a> or browse
the <a href="https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib">source
code</a>. Anything that could require changes to your existing code
is logged in the <a href="api/api_changes.html">api
changes</a> file.</p>
<h1>Toolkits</h1>
<p>There are several matplotlib add-on <a href="mpl_toolkits/index.html">toolkits</a>, including the projection
and mapping toolkit
<a href="http://matplotlib.github.com/basemap">basemap</a>, 3d plotting with <a href="mpl_toolkits/mplot3d/index.html">mplot3d</a>, axes and axis helpers in <a href="mpl_toolkits/axes_grid/index.html">axes_grid</a> and more.
</p>
<h1>Open source</h1>
<p>Please
consider <a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/project_donations.php?group_id=80706">donating</a>
to support matplotlib development or to
the <a href="http://numfocus.org/johnhunter/">John Hunter Memorial
Fund</a>.</p>
<p>The matplotlib <a href="users/license.html">license</a>
is based on the Python Software Foundation
<a href="http://www.python.org/psf/license">(PSF)</a> license.</p>
<p>There is an active developer community and a long list of people
who have made significant <a href="users/credits.html">contributions</a>.</p>
<div class="footnote"><p>
<sup><a name="ftn.matlab" href="#matlab">*</a></sup>
MATLAB is a registered trademark of The MathWorks, Inc.
</p>
<p>
<sup><a name="ftn.mathematica" href="#mathematica">†</a></sup>
Mathematica is a registered trademark of Wolfram Research, Inc.
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© Copyright 2012 John Hunter, Darren Dale, Eric Firing, Michael Droettboom and the matplotlib development team.
Last updated on Jul 23, 2013.
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