matplotlib.font_manager.win32InstalledFonts return value¶

matplotlib.font_manager.win32InstalledFonts returns an empty list instead of None if no fonts are found.

Matplotlib.use now has an ImportError for interactive backend¶

Switching backends via matplotlib.use is now allowed by default, regardless of whether matplotlib.pyplot has been imported. If the user tries to switch from an already-started interactive backend to a different interactive backend, an ImportError will be raised.

Drop support for python 2¶

Matplotlib 3 only supports python 3.5 and higher.

Changes to backend loading¶

Failure to load backend modules (macosx on non-framework builds and gtk3 when running headless) now raises ImportError (instead of RuntimeError and TypeError, respectively).

Third-party backends that integrate with an interactive framework are now encouraged to define the required_interactive_framework global value to one of the following values: "qt5", "qt4", "gtk3", "wx", "tk", or "macosx". This information will be used to determine whether it is possible to switch from a backend to another (specifically, whether they use the same interactive framework).

Axes.hist2d now uses pcolormesh instead of pcolorfast¶

Axes.hist2d now uses pcolormesh instead of pcolorfast, which will improve the handling of log-axes. Note that the returned image now is of type QuadMesh instead of AxesImage.

matplotlib.axes.Axes.get_tightbbox now includes all artists¶

For Matplotlib 3.0, all artists are now included in the bounding box returned by matplotlib.axes.Axes.get_tightbbox.

matplotlib.axes.Axes.get_tightbbox adds a new kwarg bbox_extra_artists to manually specify the list of artists on the axes to include in the tight bounding box calculation.

Layout tools like Figure.tight_layout, constrained_layout, and fig.savefig('fname.png', bbox_inches="tight") use matplotlib.axes.Axes.get_tightbbox to determine the bounds of each axes on a figure and adjust spacing between axes.

In Matplotlib 2.2 get_tightbbox started to include legends made on the axes, but still excluded some other artists, like text that may overspill an axes. This has been expanded to include all artists.

This new default may be overridden in either of three ways:

1. Make the artist to be excluded a child of the figure, not the axes. E.g., call fig.legend() instead of ax.legend() (perhaps using get_legend_handles_labels to gather handles and labels from the parent axes).
2. If the artist is a child of the axes, set the artist property artist.set_in_layout(False).
3. Manually specify a list of artists in the new kwarg bbox_extra_artists.

Text.set_text with string argument None sets string to empty¶

Text.set_text when passed a string value of None would set the string to "None", so subsequent calls to Text.get_text would return the ambiguous "None" string.

This change sets text objects passed None to have empty strings, so that Text.get_text returns an empty string.

Axes3D.get_xlim, get_ylim and get_zlim now return a tuple¶

They previously returned an array. Returning a tuple is consistent with the behavior for 2D axes.

font_manager.list_fonts now follows the platform's casefolding semantics¶

i.e., it behaves case-insensitively on Windows only.

bar / barh no longer accepts left / bottom as first named argument¶

These arguments were renamed in 2.0 to x / y following the change of the default alignment from edge to center.

Different exception types for undocumented options¶

• Passing style='comma' to ticklabel_format() was never supported. It now raises ValueError like all other unsupported styles, rather than NotImplementedError.
• Passing the undocumented xmin or xmax arguments to set_xlim() would silently override the left and right arguments. set_ylim() and the 3D equivalents (e.g. set_zlim3d()) had a corresponding problem. The _min and _max arguments are now deprecated, and a TypeError will be raised if they would override the earlier limit arguments.

Improved call signature for Axes.margins¶

matplotlib.axes.Axes.margins() and mpl_toolkits.mplot3d.Axes3D.margins() no longer accept arbitrary keywords. TypeError will therefore be raised if unknown kwargs are passed; previously they would be silently ignored.

If too many positional arguments are passed, TypeError will be raised instead of ValueError, for consistency with other call-signature violations.

Axes3D.margins now raises TypeError instead of emitting a deprecation warning if only two positional arguments are passed. To supply only x and y margins, use keyword arguments.

Explicit arguments instead of *args, **kwargs¶

PEP 3102 describes keyword-only arguments, which allow Matplotlib to provide explicit call signatures - where we previously used *args, **kwargs and kwargs.pop, we can now expose named arguments. In some places, unknown kwargs were previously ignored but now raise TypeError because **kwargs has been removed.

• matplotlib.axes.Axes.stem() no longer accepts unknown keywords, and raises TypeError instead of emitting a deprecation.
• matplotlib.axex.Axes.stem() now raises TypeError when passed unhandled positional arguments. If two or more arguments are passed (ie X, Y, [linefmt], ...) and Y cannot be cast to an array, an error will be raised instead of treating X as Y and Y as linefmt.
• mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1.axes_divider.SubPlotDivider() raises TypeError instead of Exception when passed unknown kwargs.

Cleanup decorators and test classes no longer destroy warnings filter on exit¶

The decorators and classes in matplotlib.testing.decorators no longer destroy the warnings filter on exit. Instead, they restore the warnings filter that existed before the test started using warnings.catch_warnings.

Non-interactive FigureManager classes are now aliases of FigureManagerBase¶

The FigureManagerPdf, FigureManagerPS, and FigureManagerSVG classes, which were previously empty subclasses of FigureManagerBase (i.e., not adding or overriding any attribute or method), are now direct aliases for FigureManagerBase.

Change to the output of image.thumbnail¶

When called with preview=False, image.thumbnail previously returned an figure whose canvas class was set according to the output file extension. It now returns a figure whose canvas class is the base FigureCanvasBase (and relies on FigureCanvasBase.print_figure) to handle the canvas switching properly).

As a side effect of this change, image.thumbnail now also supports .ps, .eps, and .svgz output.

FuncAnimation now draws artists according to their zorder when blitting¶

FuncAnimation now draws artists returned by the user- function according to their zorder when using blitting, instead of using the order in which they are being passed. However, note that only zorder of passed artists will be respected, as they are drawn on top of any existing artists (see #11369).

Contour color autoscaling improvements¶

Selection of contour levels is now the same for contour and contourf; previously, for contour, levels outside the data range were deleted. (Exception: if no contour levels are found within the data range, the levels attribute is replaced with a list holding only the minimum of the data range.)

When contour is called with levels specified as a target number rather than a list, and the 'extend' kwarg is used, the levels are now chosen such that some data typically will fall in the extended range.

When contour is called with a LogNorm or a LogLocator, it will now select colors using the geometric mean rather than the arithmetic mean of the contour levels.

Streamplot last row and column fixed¶

A bug was fixed where the last row and column of data in streamplot were being dropped.

Changed default AutoDateLocator kwarg interval_multiples to True¶

The default value of the tick locator for dates, dates.AutoDateLocator kwarg interval_multiples was set to False which leads to not-nice looking automatic ticks in many instances. The much nicer interval_multiples=True is the new default. See below to get the old behavior back:

(Source code)

Axes.get_position now returns actual position if aspect changed¶

Axes.get_position used to return the original position unless a draw had been triggered or Axes.apply_aspect had been called, even if the kwarg original was set to False. Now Axes.apply_aspect is called so ax.get_position() will return the new modified position. To get the old behavior use ax.get_position(original=True).

The ticks for colorbar now adjust for the size of the colorbar¶

Colorbar ticks now adjust for the size of the colorbar if the colorbar is made from a mappable that is not a contour or doesn't have a BoundaryNorm, or boundaries are not specified. If boundaries, etc are specified, the colorbar maintains the original behavior.

Colorbar for log-scaled hexbin¶

When using hexbin and plotting with a logarithmic color scale, the colorbar ticks are now correctly log scaled. Previously the tick values were linear scaled log(number of counts).

PGF backend now explicitly makes black text black¶

Previous behavior with the pgf backend was for text specified as black to actually be the default color of whatever was rendering the pgf file (which was of course usually black). The new behavior is that black text is black, regardless of the default color. However, this means that there is no way to fall back on the default color of the renderer.

Blacklisted rcparams no longer updated by rcdefaults, rc_file_defaults, rc_file¶

The rc modifier functions rcdefaults, rc_file_defaults and rc_file now ignore rcParams in the matplotlib.style.core.STYLE_BLACKLIST set. In particular, this prevents the backend and interactive rcParams from being incorrectly modified by these functions.

CallbackRegistry now stores callbacks using stdlib's WeakMethods¶

In particular, this implies that CallbackRegistry.callbacks[signal] is now a mapping of callback ids to WeakMethods (i.e., they need to be first called with no arguments to retrieve the method itself).

Changes regarding the text.latex.unicode rcParam¶

The rcParam now defaults to True and is deprecated (i.e., in future versions of Maplotlib, unicode input will always be supported).

Moreover, the underlying implementation now uses \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} instead of \usepackage{ucs}\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}.

Return type of ArtistInspector.get_aliases changed¶

ArtistInspector.get_aliases previously returned the set of aliases as {fullname: {alias1: None, alias2: None, ...}}. The dict-to-None mapping was used to simulate a set in earlier versions of Python. It has now been replaced by a set, i.e. {fullname: {alias1, alias2, ...}}.

This value is also stored in ArtistInspector.aliasd, which has likewise changed.

Removed pytz as a dependency¶

Since dateutil and pytz both provide time zones, and matplotlib already depends on dateutil, matplotlib will now use dateutil time zones internally and drop the redundant dependency on pytz. While dateutil time zones are preferred (and currently recommended in the Python documentation), the explicit use of pytz zones is still supported.

Deprecations¶

Removals¶