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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"[MNT]: Unite property cycles for lines and patches","articleBody":"### Summary\n\nLoosely insprired by #19479.\r\n\r\nWe have separate property cycles for lines and patches. This is a source of confusion and IMHO doesn't give a benefit.\n\n### Proposed fix\n\nUnite the property cycles so that an Axes has just one cycle to draw from, no matter what the Artist is.\r\n\r\n- Most simple plots use only either lines or patches. They wouldn't know the difference.\r\n- If plots have both lines and patches, e.g. one line, one bar plot, IMHO it's more clear to by default use different colors.\r\n- It's quite unlikely that people implicitly rely on synced colors to intentionally have parallelism between the lines and colors.\r\n\r\nMigration:\r\n- Add/document a way to get the state of the next element in *the* cycle (as long as there are two, use the line cycle). This will enable explicit use of a cycle element for multiple artists like this:\r\n  ```\r\n  prop = ax.prop_cycle_next()\r\n  ax.plot(..., color=prop['color'])\r\n  ax.bar(... color=prop['color'])\r\n  ```\r\n- Maybe consider ways to feed a cycle element back into a plotting function, either through an explicit kwarg `ax.plot(..., prop=prop)`, or by ensuring that the cycle element can be dict-unpacked `ax.plot(..., **prop)`.\r\n- Minimal announce this as upcoming change in the release notes. If people are relying on parallel cycles they should move to the above pattern.\r\n- We could also detect when both cyclers are used and issue a warning. The downside is that people will get a warning as soon as they use a mixture of lines and patches and they may be ok with the new behavior (it's unlikely they really intend to use the old behavior).","author":{"url":"https://github.com/timhoffm","@type":"Person","name":"timhoffm"},"datePublished":"2025-01-13T09:16:37.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":1},"url":"https://github.com/29468/matplotlib/issues/29468"}