René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"[Doc]: Information about deprecated colormaps missing from recent versions of the documentation","articleBody":"### Documentation Link\n\nhttps://matplotlib.org/devdocs/users/explain/colors/colormaps.html\nhttps://matplotlib.org/devdocs/gallery/color/colormap_reference.html\n\n### Problem\n\nPrevious versions of the pyplot documentation (pre-3.5) [included a list of all the available colormaps, with descriptions](https://matplotlib.org/3.4.3/api/pyplot_summary.html?highlight=colormaps#matplotlib.pyplot.colormaps), and notably included the information that `gist_gray`, `gist_yarg` and `binary` are deprecated, and are identical to `gray` or `gray_r`.\n\nThis information was generated from a docstring that was removed in [this pull request](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/20935), where it was [concluded that it was unnecessary to keep it because the same information is covered elsewhere](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/20935#discussion_r704124264). However, as far as I can see, the information about the deprecation / redundancy of these colormaps is nowhere to be found in the modern documentation.\n\nI ran into this issue because I work on scientific software that provides colormaps and uses matplotlib's selection as a reference -- we probably don't want to include colormaps that are just duplicates. I was sure that I saw the information about these three colormaps *somewhere*, and fell down a rabbithole trying to figure out when and why it was removed and whether it was still accurate.\n\n### Suggested improvement\n\nRestore the information about the deprecated colormaps somewhere in the docs, either in the [tutorial](https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/users/explain/colors/colormaps.html) or in the [reference](https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/gallery/color/colormap_reference.html).","author":{"url":"https://github.com/confluence","@type":"Person","name":"confluence"},"datePublished":"2025-11-28T14:26:39.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":1},"url":"https://github.com/30796/matplotlib/issues/30796"}