Admittedly not the strongest reason, but yet an important one, for switching from Matlab to python/numpy/scipy/matplotlib, is that Matlab is very cumbersome to run in batch.
Now I discover that some of the matplotlib.pyplot functions (incl. plot and contour) insist on opening an X11 window (just like Matlab does). I would have preferred just to create the plot straight on file. The extra window is a nuisance on my laptop, it is deep-felt pain if I try to run it remotely. It fails completely if I run it without any display at all. Oddly, the bar() function does not open a window by default. I was very happy with that. It works exactly the way I want. (Why isn't pyplot more consistent?) Is there something I have missed? Is it possible to create standard 2D plots and contour plots without a display, writing the graphics straight into a PDF file? I'll be grateful for any pointers and ideas, :-- George -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
