I have been running into a trouble whereby Spyder IPython console is not producing Matplotlib figures as desired. I thought initially that there is something wrong in my code since jupyter notebook gives me the same wrong figures. However, when running the script in Spyder using external terminal the figures are produced as desired. Also, when I run the code in VSC the correct figures are displayed.
So the only option I am left with in Spyder is to use the external terminal to execute the code. However, it is quite a pain every time to run some codes and then manually close the terminal.
I would like to know if there is a way to permanently attach the external terminal inside Spyder? I hate the IPython console when it comes to plotting matplotlib figures!!
(Spyder maintainer here) Sorry but there's no way to dock an external Python terminal inside Spyder.
When I call pyplot.show(block=True) a window with the correct plot appears. When trying to manually close it, the window closes but the program won't continue to run (like it's still blocked).
For instance, the following program will display the plot window and print Before, but after manually closing the window, the program still seems blocked, and After is not printed.:
plt.plot(x,y)
print("Before")
plt.show(block=True)
print("After")
I work with the latest matplotlib version (2.1.2) using the interactive TkAgg backend on Python 3.5.2.
Update - Additional info: I work with Pycharm 2017.2 on Ubuntu (VM on Windows host)
Solved by unselecting the "Use IPython if available" checkbox in PyCharm's settings.
I am working in python and using Anaconda with Spyder and I need to plot a scatter plot in a part of the code I am working on. The plot is just fine but is drawn in the console itself and the size is quite small for my needs.
My question is, how can I plot it in another window outside the ipython console? I already tried changing some of the setting like changing Graphics setting in ipython from inline to QT to tkinter. Nothing seems to work.
Any helpful suggestions?
you can just save %matplotlib qt in a .py file and you can start ipython using:
ipython -i myfile.py
This is a follow up to this interactive matplolib through eclipse thread which is about 2 years old, I was wondering if there has been any progress in the meantime.
I am running the IPython console in a console window in Eclipse PyDev, but I am unable to get the same interactive plotting features with matplotlib as if I were to run IPython in a (Windows) command prompt outside Eclipse PyDev. Here is how the two compare:
A) Running IPython in a shell outside Eclipse PyDev
Run IPython in a Windows command prompt with "ipython --pylab"
Within the IPython console enter "plot([1,2,3])". This will open a figure plot window and the IPython console is ready for further commands (without having to close the figure plot window).
For example, I can enter "xlabel('years')" and this will update my figure plot window.
B) Running IPython in an interactive console within Eclipse PyDev
Enter the following in the IPython interactive console within Eclipse PyDev:
"from pylab import *"
"plot([1,2,3])" --> Figure plot window does not show up.
I have to enter "show()" to open the figure plot window. But now the problem is that as long as I keep the figure plot window open, the IPython console does not accept any new commands.
So I close the figure plot window, enter "xlabel('years')", followed by "show()" again. This will re-open the figure plot window with "years" as my axis label, but the plot itself is empty and does not show the [1,2,3] data anymore.
With this behaviour, A) is clearly superior to B), but I would like to keep working in Eclipse PyDev because I like always having the variables list on my screen (without having to run a command to show all variables like when running IPython form a windows shell). Using Wicked Shell, as suggested in the other thread, does not work (IPython does not work properly in Wicked Shell).
How can I configure IPython in Eclipse PyDev so that it shows the same interactive behavior as if I would run it in a windows command prompt?
You can solve this problem by selecting a GUI for the Interactive Console in PyDev Preference.
Eclipse -> Window -> Preferences -> Pydev -> Interactive Console -> Enable GUI event loop integration.
In my case, I chose PyQt (qt/qt4)
Apologies for the potentially incomplete answer, but hopefully I will be able to shed some light on the problem.
I believe that the one that the OP describes is normal behaviour. In fact, starting from the command line ipython, importing pylab and issuing a plot command produces exactly the blocking behaviour described, so this is not related to pydev or eclipse. The fact is that show in matplotlib is blocking in interactive mode; when you use matplotlib in a ipython session started as "ipython --pylab", you are taking advantage of some "hacks" that the ipython developers did for you around matplotlib, allowing to have both an interactive mode and non blocking calls. However, importing pylab is not enough to apply these "hacks". PyDev does not seems to allow flags to the interpreter call, so one can't directly invoke "ipython --pylab".
Luckily, ipython has a special command "pylab" that applies the hacks and imports pylab even if the interpreter was not started with the pylab flag. So you can just try to type "pylab" inside the console (actually, you can even customize your pydev console so that it is done automatically) and you should get the desired behaviour. However, I must report that while this works fine for me from a ipython session started from the command line, something goes wrong when I try to do the same from inside Eclipse. The command doesn't block, I get the python icon but the matplotlib window doesn't show up. For the records, I am on a Mac running Snow Leopard. I am not able to tell if the same problem happens also in Windows, that the OP seems to be using.
I achieve similar behave in Eclipse PyDev by executing plotting function in another thread:
import threading
from pylab import *
import matplotlib.animation as animation
import time
x = array(range(0,1000))/100
y = sin(x)
def updateData(self):
ax.set_data(x,y)
def MyThread():
global ax
fig, axarr = subplots(1)
ax, = axarr.plot(x,y)
simulation = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, updateData)
show()
t = threading.Thread(target=MyThread)
t.start()
# console stay active, user can interactively control figure
time.sleep(1)
y = sin(2*x)
time.sleep(2)
ax.get_axes().grid()
ax.get_axes().set_xlabel("time")
Tested with toolchain Eclipse 4.3, PyDev 2.7.1, Python 3.2, IPython 0.13
Just use the %matplotlibmagic-command to activate interactive plotting (exactly what you described).
The pylab command imports numpy.* and pylab.*, seriously polluting your global namespace.
I am using matplotlib.pyplot (with Eclipse on Windows). Every time I run my code it opens several pyplot figure windows.
The problem is that if I don't close those windows manually they accumulate. I would like to use pyplot to find those windows (opened by another process of python.exe) and re-use them. In other words, I do not want to have multiple windows for the same figure, even across interpreter processes.
Is there a simple way to do it?
There is no simple way to reuse plot windows if you must use eclipse to run it. When I am working interactively with matplotlib, I use either spyder or ipython. Edit class, reload class, and run code again. If you just want to get rid of all the open plot windows, hit the stacked stop icons to kill all your runing python instances.