Creating a scrollable multiplot with python's pylab

Question

I have a large amount of plots and wish to draw them in the same figure using python. I'm currently using pylab for the plots, but since there are too many they are drawn one on top of the other. Is there a way to make the figure scrollable, such that graphs are large enough and still visible by using scrollbar?

I can use PyQT for this, but there might be a feature of pylab's figure object that I'm missing...

Answer 1

This matches the spirit of what you want, if not the letter. I think you want a window with a number of axes and then be able to scroll through the axes (but still only be able to see on average one at a time), the solution has a single axes and a slider that selects which data set to plot.

import numpy
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.widgets import Slider
# fake data
xdata = numpy.random.rand(100,100) 
ydata = numpy.random.rand(100,100) 
# set up figure
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.autoscale(True)
plt.subplots_adjust(left=0.25, bottom=0.25)

# plot first data set
frame = 0
ln, = ax.plot(xdata[frame],ydata[frame])

# make the slider
axframe = plt.axes([0.25, 0.1, 0.65, 0.03])
sframe = Slider(axframe, 'Frame', 0, 99, valinit=0,valfmt='%d')

# call back function
def update(val):
    frame = int(round(numpy.floor(sframe.val)))
    ln.set_xdata(xdata[frame])
    ln.set_ydata((frame+1)* ydata[frame])
    ax.set_title(frame)
    ax.relim()
    ax.autoscale_view()
    plt.draw()

# connect callback to slider   
sframe.on_changed(update)
plt.show()

This is adapted from the code in this question. You can add next/back buttons using the button widgets (doc).