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[Doc]: Information about deprecated colormaps missing from recent versions of the documentation #30796
Description
Documentation Link
https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/users/explain/colors/colormaps.html
https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/gallery/color/colormap_reference.html
Problem
Previous versions of the pyplot documentation (pre-3.5) included a list of all the available colormaps, with descriptions, and notably included the information that gist_gray, gist_yarg and binary are deprecated, and are identical to gray or gray_r.
This information was generated from a docstring that was removed in this pull request, where it was concluded that it was unnecessary to keep it because the same information is covered elsewhere. However, as far as I can see, the information about the deprecation / redundancy of these colormaps is nowhere to be found in the modern documentation.
I ran into this issue because I work on scientific software that provides colormaps and uses matplotlib's selection as a reference -- we probably don't want to include colormaps that are just duplicates. I was sure that I saw the information about these three colormaps somewhere, and fell down a rabbithole trying to figure out when and why it was removed and whether it was still accurate.
Suggested improvement
Restore the information about the deprecated colormaps somewhere in the docs, either in the tutorial or in the reference.
Activity
tacaswell commented on Nov 30, 2025
The wording is :
Which I would not say is deprecated, just "discouraged". On quick consideration, I am against fully deprecating them (setting a date to remove them and actually removing them). It has the risk of significant user disruption (old code that uses the disfavored names that is now broken and needs to be updated) for a minimal gain.
That said, I am 👍🏻 on adding a note that says "there are identical, prefer this one".
DOC: Discouraged duplicate colormaps
DOC: Discouraged duplicate colormaps
DOC: Discouraged duplicate colormaps
DOC: Discouraged duplicate colormaps