Tabbed window for matplotlib figures, is it possible?

Question

I have a python project that outputs several Matplotlib figures; each figure contains several charts. The problem that project launches about 15 figures (windows) every run, which I can not reduce.

Is it possible to concatenate all these figures (windows) to a single tabbed window so that each tab represents one figure?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

---

Workaround

Thanks to @mobiusklein comments below he suggested a workaround, to export the figures as myltipage pdf file as shown here.

Important note about the multipage pdf example mentioned above.

I tried it, but I got an error regarding the LaTeX use in matplotlib. Because fixing this error is beyond the scope of this question, so I suggest if it occurs to anyone, to set plt.rc('text', usetex=False) instead of usetex=True

I still hope if someone have other solution or workaround to post it for the benefit of others.

Answer 1

I wrote a simple wrapper for matplotlib that does something like you're describing. You need pyqt5 for it to work though.

Here is the code, you build a plotWindow object and feed it figure handles. It'll create a new tab for each figure.

import matplotlib
# prevent NoneType error for versions of matplotlib 3.1.0rc1+ by calling matplotlib.use()
# For more on why it's nececessary, see
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59656632/using-qt5agg-backend-with-matplotlib-3-1-2-get-backend-changes-behavior
matplotlib.use('qt5agg')

from matplotlib.backends.backend_qt5agg import FigureCanvasQTAgg as FigureCanvas
from matplotlib.backends.backend_qt5agg import NavigationToolbar2QT as NavigationToolbar
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QMainWindow, QApplication, QWidget, QTabWidget, QVBoxLayout
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import sys

class plotWindow():
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        self.app = QApplication(sys.argv)
        self.MainWindow = QMainWindow()
        self.MainWindow.__init__()
        self.MainWindow.setWindowTitle("plot window")
        self.canvases = []
        self.figure_handles = []
        self.toolbar_handles = []
        self.tab_handles = []
        self.current_window = -1
        self.tabs = QTabWidget()
        self.MainWindow.setCentralWidget(self.tabs)
        self.MainWindow.resize(1280, 900)
        self.MainWindow.show()

    def addPlot(self, title, figure):
        new_tab = QWidget()
        layout = QVBoxLayout()
        new_tab.setLayout(layout)

        figure.subplots_adjust(left=0.05, right=0.99, bottom=0.05, top=0.91, wspace=0.2, hspace=0.2)
        new_canvas = FigureCanvas(figure)
        new_toolbar = NavigationToolbar(new_canvas, new_tab)

        layout.addWidget(new_canvas)
        layout.addWidget(new_toolbar)
        self.tabs.addTab(new_tab, title)

        self.toolbar_handles.append(new_toolbar)
        self.canvases.append(new_canvas)
        self.figure_handles.append(figure)
        self.tab_handles.append(new_tab)

    def show(self):
        self.app.exec_()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import numpy as np

    pw = plotWindow()

    x = np.arange(0, 10, 0.001)

    f = plt.figure()
    ysin = np.sin(x)
    plt.plot(x, ysin, '--')
    pw.addPlot("sin", f)

    f = plt.figure()
    ycos = np.cos(x)
    plt.plot(x, ycos, '--')
    pw.addPlot("cos", f)
    pw.show()

This is also posted at: https://github.com/superjax/plotWindow

Hopefully this could be a good starting point for your application.