mplcairo 0.1a1

A (new) cairo backend for Matplotlib.

• Installation

• Building

  • Unix

    • Linux

    • OSX

  • Windows

• Use

• Benchmarks

• Test suite

• Notes

  • Antialiasing

  • Fast drawing

  • Simplification threshold

  • Font formats

  • Multi-page output

  • cairo-script output

  • Markers at Bézier control points

• Known issues

  • Missing implementation

  • Missing support from cairo

• Possible optimizations

• What about the already existing cairo (gtk3cairo) backend?

This is a new, essentially complete implementation of a cairo backend for Matplotlib. It can be used in combination with a Qt5, GTK3, Tk, wx, or macOS UI, or non-interactively (i.e., to save figure to various file formats).

Noteworthy points include:

• Speed (the backend can be up to ~10× faster than Agg, e.g., when stamping circular markers of variable colors).

• Support for a wider variety of font formats, such as otf and pfb, for vector (PDF, PS, SVG) backends (Matplotlib’s Agg backend also supports such fonts).

• Optional support for complex text layout (right-to-left languages, etc.) using Raqm. Note that Raqm depends on Fribidi, which is licensed under the LGPLv2.1+.

• Support for embedding URLs in PDF (but not SVG) output (requires cairo≥1.15.4).

• Support for multi-page output both for PDF and PS (Matplotlib only supports multi-page PDF).

Installation

mplcairo requires

• Python 3 (3.6 on Windows),

• Matplotlib≥2.2 (declared as install_requires),

• pybind11≥2.2 [1] (declared as install_requires),

• on Linux and OSX, pycairo≥1.16.0 [2] (declared as conditional install_requires),

• on Windows, cairo≥1.11.4 [3] (shipped with the wheel).

As usual, install using pip:

python -mpip install mplcairo

[1]

pybind11 is actually only a build-time requirement, but doesn’t play well with setup_requires.

[2]

pycairo 1.16.0 added get_include().

We do not actually rely on pycairo’s Python bindings. Rather, specifying a dependency on pycairo is a convenient way to specify a dependency on cairo (≥1.13.1, for pycairo≥1.14.0) itself, and allows us to load cairo at runtime instead of linking to it (simplifying the build of self-contained wheels).

On Windows, this strategy is (AFAIK) not possible, so we explicitly link against the cairo DLL. Moreover, commonly available Windows builds of pycairo (Anaconda, conda-forge, Gohlke) do not include FreeType support, and are thus unusable anyways.

[3]

cairo 1.11.4 added mesh gradient support (used by draw_quad_mesh()).

(cairo 1.15.4 added support for PDF metadata and links; the presence of this feature is detected at runtime.)

Building

This section is only relevant if you wish to build mplcairo yourself. Otherwise, proceed to the Use section.

In all cases, once the dependencies described below are installed, mplcairo can be built and installed using any of the standard commands (pip wheel --no-deps ., pip install ., pip install -e . and python setup.py build_ext -i being the most relevant ones).

If the MPLCAIRO_USE_LIBRAQM environment variable is set, the build also uses Raqm to perform complex text layout (right-to-left scripts, etc.). An installation of Raqm is required; run setup.py for instructions for Unix OSes.

Unix

The following additional dependencies are required:

• a C++ compiler with C++17 support, e.g. GCC≥7.2 or Clang≥5.0.

• cairo and FreeType headers, and pkg-config information to locate them. On Linux and OSX, if using conda, they can be installed using

  conda install -y -c conda-forge pycairo pkg-config

  as pycairo (also a dependency) depends on cairo, which depends on freetype. Note that cairo and pkg-config from the anaconda channel will not work.

Linux

conda’s compilers (gxx_linux-64 on the anaconda channel) currently interact poorly with installing cairo and pkg-config from conda-forge, so you are on your own to install a recent compiler (e.g., using your distribution’s package manager).

The manylinux wheel is built using tools/build-manylinux.sh. It does not include Raqm.

NOTE: On Arch Linux, the python-pillow 5.0.0-1 (Arch) package includes an invalid version raqm.h (https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/57492) and must not be installed while building a Raqm-enabled version of mplcairo using the system Python, even in a virtualenv (it can be installed when using mplcairo without causing any problems). One solution is to temporarily uninstall the package; another one is to package it yourself using e.g. pypi2pkgbuild.

OSX

Clang≥5.0 can be installed from conda’s anaconda channel (conda install -c anaconda clangxx_osx-64), or can also be installed with Homebrew (brew install llvm). Note that Homebrew’s llvm formula is keg-only, i.e. it requires manual modifications to the PATH and LDFLAGS (as documented by brew info llvm).

The OSX wheel is built using delocate-wheel (to vendor a recent version of libc++). Currently, it can only be built from a Homebrew-clang wheel, not a conda-clang wheel (due to some path intricacies…). It does not include Raqm.

Windows

The following additional dependencies are required:

• a “recent enough” version of MSVC (19.13.26128 is sufficient). (This is the reason for restricting support to Python 3.6 on Windows: distutils is able to use MSVC 2017 only since Python 3.6.4.)

• FreeType headers, which can e.g. be installed using conda

  conda install -y freetype

• a cairo build (the headers, cairo.lib, and cairo.dll) with FreeType support. As noted above, this excludes, in particular, the Anaconda, conda-forge, or Gohlke builds. One place from where such a build is available is https://github.com/preshing/cairo-windows/releases: download the zip file and unpack it.

  Because you will always need to provide cairo yourself, we did not implement any special way to configure the location where it will be found. Instead, you must set the (standard) CL and LINK environment variables (which always get prepended respectively to the invocations of the compiler and the linker) as follows:

  set CL=/IC:\path\to\directory\containing\cairo.h
  set LINK=/LIBPATH:C\path\to\directory\containing\cairo.lib

  Moreover, we also need to find cairo.dll and copy it next to mplcairo’s extension module. As cairo.dll is typically found next to cairo.lib, we explicitly require the LINK environment variable to use the above format and start with /LIBPATH: (case-insensitive); we always copy cairo.dll from that directory.

Use

On Linux and Windows, mplcairo can be used as any normal Matplotlib backend: call e.g. matplotlib.use("module://mplcairo.qt") before importing pyplot, add a backend: module://mplcairo.qt line in your matplotlibrc, or set the MPLBACKEND environment variable to module://mplcairo.qt. More specifically, the following backends are provided:

• module://mplcairo.base (No GUI, but can output to EPS, PDF, PS, SVG, and SVGZ using cairo’s implementation, rather than Matplotlib’s),

• module://mplcairo.gtk (GTK3 widget, copying data from a cairo image surface),

• module://mplcairo.gtk_native (GTK3 widget, directly drawn onto as a native surface; does not and cannot support blitting),

• module://mplcairo.qt (Qt5 widget, copying data from a cairo image surface),

• module://mplcairo.tk (Tk widget, copying data from a cairo image surface),

• module://mplcairo.wx (wx widget, copying data from a cairo image surface),

• module://mplcairo.macosx (macOS widget, copying data from a cairo image surface).

On OSX, it is necessary to explicitly import mplcairo before importing Matplotlib due to incompatibilities associated with the use of a recent libc++. As such, the most practical option is to import mplcairo, then call e.g. matplotlib.use("module//mplcairo.macosx").

To use cairo rendering in Jupyter’s inline mode, patch

ipykernel.pylab.backnd_inline.new_figure_manager = \
    mplcairo.base.new_figure_manager

Alternatively, set the MPLCAIRO_PATCH_AGG environment variable to a non-empty value to fully replace the Agg renderer by the cairo renderer throughout Matplotlib. However, this approach is inefficient (due to the need of copies and conversions between premultiplied ARGB32 and non-premultiplied RGBA8888 buffers); additionally, it does not work with the wx and macosx backends due to peculiarities of the corresponding canvas classes. On the other hand, this is currently the only way in which the webagg-based backends (e.g., Jupyter’s inline widget) are supported.

The examples directory contains a few cases where the output of this renderer is arguably more accurate than the one of the default renderer, Agg:

• circle_markers.py and square_markers.py: more accurate and faster marker stamping.

• markevery.py: more accurate marker stamping.

• quadmesh.py: better antialiasing of quad meshes, fewer artefacts with masked data.

• text_kerning.py: improved text kerning.

Benchmarks

Install (in the virtualenv) pytest>=3.1.0 and pytest-benchmark, then call (e.g.):

pytest --benchmark-group-by=fullfunc --benchmark-timer=time.process_time

Keep in mind that conda-forge’s cairo is (on my setup) ~2× slower than a “native” build of cairo.

Test suite

Run run-mpl-test-suite.py to run the Matplotlib test suite with the Agg backend patched by the mplcairo backend. Matplotlib must be editably-installed from a git checkout. Certain tests that are known to fail (and listed in ISSUES.rst) are automatically skipped.

Notes

Antialiasing

The artist antialiasing property can be set to any of the cairo_antialias_t enum values, or True (the default) or False (which is synonym to NONE).

Setting antialiasing to True uses FAST antialiasing for lines thicker than 1/3px and BEST for lines thinner than that: for lines thinner than 1/3px, the former leads to artefacts such as lines disappearing in certain sections (see e.g. test_cycles.test_property_collision_plot after forcing the antialiasing to FAST). The threshold of 1/3px was determined empirically, see examples/thin_line_antialiasing.py.

Note that in order to set the lines.antialiased or patch.antialiased rcparams to a cairo_antialias_t enum value, it is necessary to bypass rcparam validation, using, e.g.

dict.__setitem__(plt.rcParams, "lines.antialiased", antialias_t.FAST)

The text.antialiased rcparam can likewise be set to any cairo_antialias_t enum value, or True (the default, which maps to GRAY due to cairo bug #99021) or False (which maps to NONE).

Fast drawing

For fast drawing of path with many segments, the agg.path.chunksize rcparam should be set to 1000 (see examples/time_drawing_per_element.py for the determination of this value); this causes longer paths to be split into individually rendered sections of 1000 segments each (directly rendering longer paths appears to have slightly superlinear complexity).

Simplification threshold

The path.simplify_threshold rcparam is used to control the accuracy of marker stamping, down to an arbitrarily chosen threshold of 1/16px. Values lower than that will use the exact (slower) marker drawing path. Marker stamping is also implemented for scatter plots (which can have multiple colors). Likewise, markers of different sizes get mapped into markers of discretized sizes, with an error bounded by the threshold.

NOTE: pcolor and mplot3d’s plot_surface display some artifacts where the facets join each other. This is because these functions internally use a PathCollection, thus triggering the approximate stamping. pcolor should be deprecated in favor of pcolormesh (internally using a QuadMesh), and plot_surface should likewise instead represent the surface using QuadMesh, which is drawn without such artefacts.

Font formats

In order to use a specific font that Matplotlib may be unable to use, pass a filename directly:

from matplotlib.font_manager import FontProperties
ax.text(.5, .5, "hello, world", fontproperties=FontProperties(fname="..."))

mplcairo still relies on Matplotlib’s font cache, so fonts unsupported by Matplotlib remain unavailable by other means. Matplotlib’s current FreeType wrapper also limits the use of ttc collections to the first font in the collection.

Note that Matplotlib’s (default) Agg backend will handle such fonts equally well (ultimately, both backends relies on FreeType for rasterization). It is Matplotlib’s vector backends (PS, PDF, and, for pfb fonts, SVG) that do not support these fonts, whereas mplcairo support these fonts in all output formats.

Multi-page output

Matplotlib’s PdfPages class is deeply tied with the builtin backend_pdf (in fact, it cannot even be used with Matplotlib’s own cairo backend). Instead, use mplcairo.multipage.MultiPage for multi-page PDF and PS output. The API is similar:

from mplcairo.multipage import MultiPage

fig1 = ...
fig2 = ...
with MultiPage(path_or_stream) as mp:
    mp.savefig(fig1)
    mp.savefig(fig2)

cairo-script output

Setting the MPLCAIRO_DEBUG environment variable to a non-empty value allows one to save figures (with savefig) in the .cairoscript format, which is a “native script that matches the cairo drawing model”. This may be helpful for troubleshooting purposes.

Note that this may crash the process after the file is written, due to cairo bug #104410.

Markers at Bézier control points

draw_markers draws a marker at each control point of the given path, which is the documented behavior, even though all builtin renderers only draw markers at straight or Bézier segment ends.

Known issues

Missing implementation

Support for the following features is missing:

• the svg.image_inline rcparam.

• the deprecated svg.image_noscale rcparam.

Missing support from cairo

• SVG output does not set URLs on any element, as cairo provides no support for doing so.

• PS output does not respect SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.

• The following rcparams have no effect: pdf.fonttype, pdf.use14corefonts, ps.fonttype, ps.useafm, svg.fonttype, svg.hashsalt.

Possible optimizations

• Cache eviction policy and persistent cache for draw_path_collection.

• Path simplification (although cairo appears to use vertex reduction and Douglas-Peucker internally?).

• mathtext should probably hold onto a vector of FT_Glyphs instead of reloading a FT_Face for each glyph, but that’ll likely wait for the ft2 rewrite in Matplotlib itself.

• Use QtOpenGLWidget and the cairo-gl backend.

• hexbin currently falls back on the slow implementation due to its use of the offset_position parameter. This should be fixed on Matplotlib’s side.

What about the already existing cairo (gtk3cairo) backend?

It is slow (try running examples/mplot3d/wire3d_animation.py), buggy (try calling imshow, especially with an alpha channel), and renders math poorly (try title(r"$\sqrt{2}$")).