René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"add_subplot(..., axes_cls=...)","articleBody":"I would like to suggest adding an `axes_cls` parameter to `add_subplot()`/`add_axes()`, to support creating axes using custom Axes subclasses -- specifically with the idea of better integrating axes_grid/axisartist into Matplotlib.\r\n\r\nCurrently, using an axes_grid/axisartist Axes requires a rather unusual sequence of calls, of the form\r\n```python\r\nfrom mpl_toolkits.\u003c...\u003e import SomeAxesSubclass\r\nax = SomeAxesSubclass(fig, 111, **kwargs)\r\nfig.add_subplot(ax)  # It's quite rare to call add_subplot() with an Axes instance!\r\n```\r\ninstead, I propose that one can simply write\r\n```python\r\nfrom mpl_toolkits.\u003c...\u003e import SomeAxesSubclass\r\nax = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1, axes_cls=SomeAxesSubclass, **kwargs)\r\n# or, in the common case (add_subplot defaults to 111):\r\nax = fig.add_subplot(axes_cls=SomeAxesSubclass, **kwargs)\r\n```\r\n\r\nNote that there is precedence in that `plt.figure` likewise takes a `FigureClass` argument for custom figure subclasses.  (If we wanted to be consistent we could name the new kwarg `AxesClass` instead of `axes_cls`, but... ugh.)  Also note that `axes_class` would conflict with the `projection` kwarg, because projections (e.g. polar) are also implemented as custom axes subclasses, but that's just how things are: you can't automatically combine a mpl_toolkits subclass with a projection subclass.\r\n\r\nSee also https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/17335#issuecomment-625070659.\r\n\r\nOne side advantage is that this would also make all the explicit Subplot classes (HostAxes vs. SubplotHost, axislines.Subplot vs. axislines.Axes) unnecessary: add_subplot would dynamically create the subclasses, with exactly the same machinery as it does for the normal Axes/Subplot.\r\n\r\nI don't think the implementation will be particularly hard; as usual the hardest is deciding whether we want this or not :-)","author":{"url":"https://github.com/anntzer","@type":"Person","name":"anntzer"},"datePublished":"2020-09-23T09:18:14.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":9},"url":"https://github.com/18548/matplotlib/issues/18548"}