Chapter 5. Embedding Matplotlib in GTK+3

We have worked on quite a few examples so far, and now have a good foundation from which to use Matplotlib to generate data plots and figures. While using Matplotlib alone is very handy in generating interactive figures, experimenting with datasets, and understanding substructures of data, there may be instances where we want an application to acquire, parse, and display our data.

In this chapter, we will study examples on how to embed Matplotlib in applications through GTK+3. 

Installing and setting up GTK+3

Setting up GTK+3 is fairly simple and straightforward. There are quite a few ways to install GTK+3 depending on your OS version and environment.

Note

We encourage our readers refer to the link: https://python-gtk-3-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html for the latest updates and information on installation.

At the time of writing this book, the official website advises users to install GTK+3 through JHBuild. However, users have experienced a compatibility issue with JHBuild with the macOS El Capitan. 

Note

We recommend macOS users to use the package manager brew to install GTK+3.

GTK+3 can be installed simply if you have brew installed in your macOS:

#Installing the gtk3 packagebrewinstallgtk3#Installing PyGObjectbrewinstallpygobject3

For Linux systems such as Ubuntu, GTK+3 is installed by default. For sophisticated and advanced users who prefer a more customized approach to installing GTK+3, we encourage referring their website to obtain the most recently...

Summary

In this chapter, we have worked through examples on embedding Matplotlib figures inside a simple GTK+3 window, adding the Matplotlib navigation toolbar, plotting data in an interactive framework, and using Glade to design a GUI. We have kept the examples simple to highlight the important parts, but we encourage readers to explore further possibilities. GTK+3 is not the only GUI library that can be used. In the coming chapters, we'll see how to use two other important libraries!