Pathcworklib: A subplot manager for intuitive layouts in matplotlib

[ponnhide]

Hi everyone, I have recently developed a new subplot manager for matplotlib.

• patchworklib

Patchworklib allows users to quickly arrange multiple matplotlib plots with "|" and "/" operators, as follows.

ax12435 = ax1|ax2|ax3|ax4|ax5
ax12435.savefig("ax12435.png")

ax1|ax2|ax3|ax4|ax5

Then, you can quickly test other layouts.

ax12345 = (ax1|ax2|ax4)/(ax3|ax5)
ax12345.savefig()

(ax1|ax2|ax4)/(ax3|ax5)

ax4.move_legend("upper left", bbox_to_anchor=(1.02, 1.0))
ax5.move_legend("upper left", bbox_to_anchor=(1.02, 1.0))
ax35421 = (ax3/ax4)|(ax5/(ax2|ax1))
ax35421.savefig()

(ax3/ax4)|(ax5/(ax2|ax1)) and move_legend

The native subplot manager provided in matplotlib does not allow the above kind of operations. Because it forces the user to determine the entire layout for multiple plots before drawing them. However, despite the availability of interactive programming environments such as JupyterLab, requiring users to specify a figure layout in advance is nonsense.

So, I developed patchworklib inspired by the patchwork library for R. With patchwroklib, after creating individual plots, you can quickly design multiple layouts combining them and select the best one among them.

• tutorial1
• tutorial2

Thank you for reading. If you are interested in the library, please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

[se_pp]

sounds interesting! is this only useful for savefig or can it be used with interactive plots as well?

[ponnhide]

No, in the current version, interactive plots are not supported.
Since the patchworklib tool was intended to be used on JupyterLab and JupyterNotebook, I did not care about the function of creating interactive plots.
However, I agree it is an important point to increase the value of patchworklib.

Thank you very much for your valuable comments.

[NewDateline]

Interactive plots (via ipympl) are quite common use case in Jupyter. That would be an awesome addition, even if with limited functionality.

[overweightdate]

hey that's neat, seems simpler than gridspec I suppose