matplotlib, Preview, and AppleScript -- Oh, My!

nathanieltroutman - Posted on 13 March 2010

I use matplotlib fairly frequently in my research, it rocks. However, the fact that the MacOSX backed doesn't let me use 'Cmd-Q' to close things down is annoying. So my solution is a combination of pycario and preview with a little AppleScript through in for fun. I program in Eclipse with PyDev, however I run my python programs exclusively from iTerm. Hence, I'm used to cmd-tabbing back and forth between iterm and eclipse. However, when I run a program that opens up a gui, such doing "pylab.show()" things get annoying. When using other gui elements that allow 'Cmd-Q' to close things down it doesn't interupt my work flow:

cmd-tab to iterm from eclipse
run python program
look at resulting gui which is now the forground window
cmd-q to close the gui
cmd-tab to eclipse from iterm

And I never touched the mouse. With pylab.show() it looks like this:

cmd-tab to iterm from eclipse
run python program
look at gui
cmd-q which does nothing
move the mouse over to the x-button to close the window
cmd-tab to eclipse from iterm

Which is annoying to me. My solution? Don't bother with the MacOSC backend for matplotlib since I don't need any of its features, i just want to see the graph for about 5 seconds. So my code would look something like:

import os
import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.use('cairo')
import pylab as plt
import numpy as np
 
plt.plot(np.random.random(10))
 
plt.savefig('/tmp/tmp.png')
os.system('osascript -e "tell application \\"Eclipse\\" to activate"')
os.system('open /tmp/tmp.png')

So the first few lines should make since, import stuff, pick the "cairo" backend, plot some random numbers. Then it gets interesting. Instead of "plt.show()" I save the figure to a png, then using AppleScript I call Eclipse to the foreground, and last I open the saved figure which uses Preview. Now the window order is Preview > Eclipse > iTerm.