Glossary

AGG

The Anti-Grain Geometry (Agg) rendering engine, capable of rendering high-quality images

Cairo

The Cairo graphics engine

dateutil

The dateutil library provides extensions to the standard datetime module

EPS

Encapsulated Postscript (EPS)

FreeType

FreeType is a font rasterization library used by matplotlib which supports TrueType, Type 1, and OpenType fonts.

GDK

The Gimp Drawing Kit for GTK+

GTK

The GIMP Toolkit (GTK) graphical user interface library

JPG

The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) compression method and file format for photographic images

numpy

numpy is the standard numerical array library for python, the successor to Numeric and numarray. numpy provides fast operations for homogeneous data sets and common mathematical operations like correlations, standard deviation, fourier transforms, and convolutions.

PDF

Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF)

PNG

Portable Network Graphics (PNG), a raster graphics format that employs lossless data compression which is more suitable for line art than the lossy jpg format. Unlike the gif format, png is not encumbered by requirements for a patent license.

PS

Postscript (PS) is a vector graphics ASCII text language widely used in printers and publishing. Postscript was developed by adobe systems and is starting to show its age: for example is does not have an alpha channel. PDF was designed in part as a next-generation document format to replace postscript

pgi

pgi exists as a relatively new Python wrapper to GTK3 and acts as a pure python alternative to PyGObject. pgi still exists in its infancy, currently missing many features of PyGObject. However Matplotlib does not use any of these missing features.

pygtk

pygtk provides python wrappers for the GTK widgets library for use with the GTK or GTKAgg backend. Widely used on linux, and is often packages as ‘python-gtk2’

PyGObject

Like pygtk, PyGObject provides python wrappers for the GTK widgets library; unlike pygtk, PyGObject wraps GTK3 instead of the now obsolete GTK2.

pyqt

pyqt provides python wrappers for the Qt widgets library and is required by the matplotlib Qt5Agg and Qt4Agg backends. Widely used on linux and windows; many linux distributions package this as ‘python-qt5’ or ‘python-qt4’.

python

python is an object oriented interpreted language widely used for scripting, application development, web application servers, scientific computing and more.

pytz

pytz provides the Olson tz database in Python. it allows accurate and cross platform timezone calculations and solves the issue of ambiguous times at the end of daylight savings

Qt

Qt is a cross-platform application framework for desktop and embedded development.

Qt4

Qt4 is the previous, but most widely used, version of Qt cross-platform application framework for desktop and embedded development.

Qt5

Qt5 is the current version of Qt cross-platform application framework for desktop and embedded development.

raster graphics

Raster graphics, or bitmaps, represent an image as an array of pixels which is resolution dependent. Raster graphics are generally most practical for photo-realistic images, but do not scale easily without loss of quality.

SVG

The Scalable Vector Graphics format (SVG). An XML based vector graphics format supported by many web browsers.

TIFF

Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) is a file format for storing images, including photographs and line art.

Tk

Tk is a graphical user interface for Tcl and many other dynamic languages. It can produce rich, native applications that run unchanged across Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and more.

vector graphics

vector graphics use geometrical primitives based upon mathematical equations to represent images in computer graphics. Primitives can include points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygons. Vector graphics are scalable, which means that they can be resized without suffering from issues related to inherent resolution like are seen in raster graphics. Vector graphics are generally most practical for typesetting and graphic design applications.

wxpython

wxpython provides python wrappers for the wxWidgets library for use with the WX and WXAgg backends. Widely used on linux, OS-X and windows, it is often packaged by linux distributions as ‘python-wxgtk’

wxWidgets

WX is cross-platform GUI and tools library for GTK, MS Windows, and MacOS. It uses native widgets for each operating system, so applications will have the look-and-feel that users on that operating system expect.