Getting started¶

The documentation for matplotlib is generated from ReStructured Text using the Sphinx documentation generation tool. Sphinx-1.0 or later and numpydoc 0.4 or later is required.

The documentation sources are found in the doc/ directory in the trunk. To build the users guide in html format, cd into doc/ and do:

python make.py html

or:

./make.py html

you can also pass a latex flag to make.py to build a pdf, or pass no arguments to build everything.

The output produced by Sphinx can be configured by editing the conf.py file located in the doc/.

Organization of matplotlib’s documentation¶

The actual ReStructured Text files are kept in doc/users, doc/devel, doc/api and doc/faq. The main entry point is doc/index.rst, which pulls in the index.rst file for the users guide, developers guide, api reference, and faqs. The documentation suite is built as a single document in order to make the most effective use of cross referencing, we want to make navigating the Matplotlib documentation as easy as possible.

Additional files can be added to the various guides by including their base file name (the .rst extension is not necessary) in the table of contents. It is also possible to include other documents through the use of an include statement, such as:

.. include:: ../../TODO

# in lines.py
def set_linestyle(self, linestyle):
    """
    Set the linestyle of the line

    ACCEPTS: [ '-' | '--' | '-.' | ':' | 'steps' | 'None' | ' ' | '' ]
    """

# in lines.py
artist.kwdocd['Line2D'] = artist.kwdoc(Line2D)

# in axes.py
def plot(self, *args, **kwargs):
    """
    Some stuff omitted

    The kwargs are Line2D properties:
    %(Line2D)s

    kwargs scalex and scaley, if defined, are passed on
    to autoscale_view to determine whether the x and y axes are
    autoscaled; default True.  See Axes.autoscale_view for more
    information
    """
    pass
plot.__doc__ = cbook.dedent(plot.__doc__) % artist.kwdocd

Formatting¶

The Sphinx website contains plenty of documentation concerning ReST markup and working with Sphinx in general. Here are a few additional things to keep in mind:

• Please familiarize yourself with the Sphinx directives for inline markup. Matplotlib’s documentation makes heavy use of cross-referencing and other semantic markup. For example, when referring to external files, use the :file: directive.

• Function arguments and keywords should be referred to using the emphasis role. This will keep matplotlib’s documentation consistent with Python’s documentation:

  Here is a description of *argument*

  Please do not use the default role:

  Please do not describe `argument` like this.

  nor the literal role:

  Please do not describe ``argument`` like this.

• Sphinx does not support tables with column- or row-spanning cells for latex output. Such tables can not be used when documenting matplotlib.

• Mathematical expressions can be rendered as png images in html, and in the usual way by latex. For example:

  :math:`\sin(x_n^2)` yields: \(\sin(x_n^2)\), and:

  .. math::
  
    \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}\frac{e^{i\phi}}{1+x^2\frac{e^{i\phi}}{1+x^2}}

  yields:

  \[\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}\frac{e^{i\phi}}{1+x^2\frac{e^{i\phi}}{1+x^2}}\]

• Interactive IPython sessions can be illustrated in the documentation using the following directive:

  .. sourcecode:: ipython
  
    In [69]: lines = plot([1,2,3])

  which would yield:

  In [69]: lines = plot([1,2,3])

• Footnotes [1] can be added using [#]_, followed later by:

  .. rubric:: Footnotes
  
  .. [#]

  Footnotes

  [1]	For example.

• Use the note and warning directives, sparingly, to draw attention to important comments:

  .. note::
     Here is a note

  yields:

  ノート

  here is a note

  also:

  警告

  here is a warning

• Use the deprecated directive when appropriate:

  .. deprecated:: 0.98
     This feature is obsolete, use something else.

  yields:

  バージョン 0.98 で撤廃: This feature is obsolete, use something else.

• Use the versionadded and versionchanged directives, which have similar syntax to the deprecated role:

  .. versionadded:: 0.98
     The transforms have been completely revamped.

  バージョン 0.98 で追加: The transforms have been completely revamped.

• Use the seealso directive, for example:

  .. seealso::
  
     Using ReST :ref:`emacs-helpers`:
        One example
  
     A bit about :ref:`referring-to-mpl-docs`:
        One more

  yields:

  参考

  Using ResT Emacs helpers:

  One example

  A bit about Referring to mpl documents:

  One more

• Please keep the Glossary in mind when writing documentation. You can create a references to a term in the glossary with the :term: role.

• The autodoc extension will handle index entries for the API, but additional entries in the index need to be explicitly added.

• Please limit the text width of docstrings to 70 characters.

• Keyword arguments should be described using a definition list.

  ノート

  matplotlib makes extensive use of keyword arguments as pass-through arguments, there are a many cases where a table is used in place of a definition list for autogenerated sections of docstrings.

Figures¶

.. plot:: mpl_examples/pylab_examples/simple_plot.py

.. plot:: pyplots/tex_unicode_demo.py
   :include-source:

# -*- noplot -*-

.. raw:: html

   <iframe width="420" height="315"
     src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/32cjc6V0OZY"
     frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>
   </iframe>

ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, np.arange(1, len(y)),
    interval=25, blit=True, init_func=init)

ani.save('double_pendulum.mp4', fps=15)

Referring to mpl documents¶

In the documentation, you may want to include to a document in the matplotlib src, e.g., a license file or an image file from mpl-data, refer to it via a relative path from the document where the rst file resides, eg, in users/navigation_toolbar.rst, we refer to the image icons with:

.. image:: ../../lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/images/subplots.png

In the users subdirectory, if I want to refer to a file in the mpl-data directory, I use the symlink directory. For example, from customizing.rst:

.. literalinclude:: ../../lib/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc

One exception to this is when referring to the examples dir. Relative paths are extremely confusing in the sphinx plot extensions, so without getting into the dirty details, it is easier to simply include a symlink to the files at the top doc level directory. This way, API documents like matplotlib.pyplot.plot() can refer to the examples in a known location.

In the top level doc directory we have symlinks pointing to the mpl examples:

home:~/mpl/doc> ls -l mpl_*
mpl_examples -> ../examples

So we can include plots from the examples dir using the symlink:

.. plot:: mpl_examples/pylab_examples/simple_plot.py

We used to use a symlink for mpl-data too, but the distro becomes very large on platforms that do not support links (eg the font files are duplicated and large)

Internal section references¶

To maximize internal consistency in section labeling and references, use hyphen separated, descriptive labels for section references, eg:

.. _howto-webapp:

and refer to it using the standard reference syntax:

See :ref:`howto-webapp`

Keep in mind that we may want to reorganize the contents later, so let’s avoid top level names in references like user or devel or faq unless necessary, because for example the FAQ “what is a backend?” could later become part of the users guide, so the label:

.. _what-is-a-backend

is better than:

.. _faq-backend

In addition, since underscores are widely used by Sphinx itself, let’s prefer hyphens to separate words.

Section names, etc¶

For everything but top level chapters, please use Upper lower for section titles, eg Possible hangups rather than Possible Hangups

Inheritance diagrams¶

Class inheritance diagrams can be generated with the inheritance-diagram directive. To use it, you provide the directive with a number of class or module names (separated by whitespace). If a module name is provided, all classes in that module will be used. All of the ancestors of these classes will be included in the inheritance diagram.

A single option is available: parts controls how many of parts in the path to the class are shown. For example, if parts == 1, the class matplotlib.patches.Patch is shown as Patch. If parts == 2, it is shown as patches.Patch. If parts == 0, the full path is shown.

Example:

.. inheritance-diagram:: matplotlib.patches matplotlib.lines matplotlib.text
   :parts: 2

Emacs helpers¶

There is an emacs mode rst.el which automates many important ReST tasks like building and updating table-of-contents, and promoting or demoting section headings. Here is the basic .emacs configuration:

(require 'rst)
(setq auto-mode-alist
      (append '(("\\.txt$" . rst-mode)
                ("\\.rst$" . rst-mode)
                ("\\.rest$" . rst-mode)) auto-mode-alist))

Some helpful functions:

C-c TAB - rst-toc-insert

  Insert table of contents at point

C-c C-u - rst-toc-update

    Update the table of contents at point

C-c C-l rst-shift-region-left

    Shift region to the left

C-c C-r rst-shift-region-right

    Shift region to the right