Search code examples
pythonmacosmatplotlibplot

Matplotlib plots not showing up in Mac OSX?

I am running Mac OSX 10.5.8. I installed matplotlib using macports. I get some examples from the matplotlib gallery like this one, without modification:

http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/api/unicode_minus.html

I run it, get no error, but the picture does not show up. In Linux Ubuntu I get it.

Do you know what could be wrong here?

Solution

  • I can verify this on my end as well. To fix, here's what I did

    sudo port install py25-matplotlib +cairo+gtk2
sudo port install py26-matplotlib +cairo+gtk2

    Also, we need to change the default backend to a GUI based one.

    Edit the file ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc, and add:

    backend: GTKCairo

    Also, you can try the following, which may allow you to not need the GTK or Cairo backends. Edit ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc and add:

    backend: MacOSX

    With the port with those variants installed, this works as well, but it doesn't require X11.

    By the way, the error that I saw was the following:

    /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/__init__.py:41: UserWarning: 
Your currently selected backend, 'Agg' does not support show().
Please select a GUI backend in your matplotlibrc file ('/Users/wlynch/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc') or with matplotlib.use()
(backend, matplotlib.matplotlib_fname()))