pub-ready-plots 1.0

Easy publication-ready matplotlib plots for ML papers and posters.

Agustinus' Very Opiniated Publication-Ready Plotting Library

I love TikZ (btw). I love tikzplotlib. I've been an advocate for the latter (proof). However, tikzplotlib is as good as dead. I need to move on.

[!IMPORTANT] Here's what I use now for all my publication needs. This library is designed to be very opiniated. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Also, it is very simple, just a single file and that's it.

[!NOTE] Of course I still use TikZ whenever possible (e.g. Fig. 1 in a paper, diagrams, etc.)

Examples

Left: ICML (letter size), single-column layout. Right: A0 landscape poster, 3-column layout.

       

import pub_ready_plots

...

pub_ready_plots.get_context(
    ...
-   layout="icml",
+   layout="poster-landscape",
    ...
)

...

Installation

Still with me? Still want to use this library? Here's how:

pip install pub-ready-plots

Quick usage

import pub_ready_plots

with pub_ready_plots.get_context(
    width_frac=1,  # Multiplier for `\linewidth`
    height_frac=0.15,  # Multiplier for `\textheight`
    layout="icml",  # or "iclr", "neurips", "aistats", "uai", "tmlr", "poster-portrait", "poster-landscape"
    single_col=False,  # only works for the "icml", "aistats", "uai" layouts
    nrows=1,  # depending on your subplots, default = 1
    ncols=2,  # depending on your subplots, default = 1
    override_rc_params={"lines.linewidth": 4.123},  # Overriding rcParams
    sharey=True,  # Additional keyword args for `plt.subplots`
) as (fig, axs):
    # Do whatever you want with `fig` and `axs`
    ...

    # Once your done, save it, but do NOT set `tight_layout=True`!
    fig.savefig("filename.pdf")

Then in your LaTeX file, include the plot as follows:

\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{filename.pdf}

[!IMPORTANT] The argument width=\linewidth is crucial! Also, do not specify the height option! Otherwise, your plot is distorted. (All measurements have been done in pub-ready-plots.)

That's it! But you should use TikZ more. Anyway, see the full, runnable example in examples/simple_plot.py

[!TIP] I recommend using this library in conjunction with pypalettes to avoid the generic blue-orange Matplotlib colors. Distinguish your plots from others!

Advanced usages

Creating plots for \wrapfigure

Say we want to have an inline figure of size 0.4\textwidth and height 0.15\textheight in our NeurIPS paper. Then all we have to do is the following:

import pub_ready_plots

with pub_ready_plots.get_context(
    width_frac=0.4, height_frac=0.15, layout="neurips",
) as (fig, axs):
    # Your plot here!
    ...
    fig.savefig("mywrapfigure.pdf")

In our LaTeX doc, we can then use the wrapfig package and do the following:

Some paragraph.

\begin{wrapfigure}[11]{r}{0.4\textwidth}
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{mywrapfigure.pdf}
  ...
\end{wrapfigure}

Some other paragraph.

[!IMPORTANT] In the \begin{wrapfigure} statement, specify the correct figure size (in our case, 0.4\textwidth). Then, in the \includegraphics statement, always specify width=\linewidth without specifying the height.

Using your own styles

Two options:

1. Use this library and update the resulting rc_params dict with your styles.
   • See examples/advanced_usage.py
2. Fork this repo and modify things as you wish.

Other libraries

Check out tueplots if you want a more complex library. My library is designed to achieve what I want in my papers and posters, with as little code as possible. Because of this, it is very forkable and hackable.