itermplot

An awesome iTerm2 backend for Matplotlib, so you can plot directly in your terminal.

The above is achieved with zero modifications to your Python script. For example, the above plots are generated with the following code:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import networkx as nx

plt.rcParams["font.size"] = 10

plt.figure(figsize=(8,3))

ax = plt.subplot(121)
x = np.arange(0,10,0.001)
ax.plot(x, np.sin(np.sinc(x)), 'r', lw=2)
ax.set_title('Nice wiggle')

ax = plt.subplot(122)
plt.tick_params(axis='both', left='off', top='off', right='off', bottom='off', labelleft='off', labeltop='off', labelright='off', labelbottom='off')
G = nx.random_geometric_graph(200, 0.125)
pos=nx.spring_layout(G)
nx.draw_networkx_edges(G, pos, alpha=0.2)
nx.draw_networkx_nodes(G, pos, node_color='r', node_size=12)
ax.set_title('Random graph')

plt.show()

Note: you need to run plt.show() to display the figure.

Reverse video

If you use a dark background in your terminal, you can enable "reverse video" mode by adding this to your .profile:

export ITERMPLOT="rv"

Installation

Using pip

Install using pip using the command:

pip3 install git+https://github.com/daleroberts/itermplot.git

Add MPLBACKEND to your environment. If you use bash, then this can be accomplished using the command:

export MPLBACKEND="module://itermplot"

You can add the export line above to your .profile file so that itermplot is always enabled in your terminal.

Manually

To install manually, you need to have the itermplot.py file in your PYTHONPATH and have the MPLBACKEND environment variable set. One way to do this (permanently) is to add the following two lines to your .profile file in your home directory.

export PYTHONPATH=~/itermplot:$PYTHONPATH
export MPLBACKEND="module://itermplot"

Bugs

This is backend is very alpha, so if you have a problem please raise an Issue on GitHub and I will try to fix it. Thanks.