Embedding a Matplotlib figure in a GTK+ window

We can now start to describe how to embed a Matplotlib Figure into a GTK+ window as we walk through the code. We will present a simple example, and describe it step-by-step, highlighting the important parts of the code, in particular the GTK+ related ones.

Note again, we are not going to explain the GTK+ functionalities completely, and it is left to the reader to read further if he/she is interested.

Let's start:

import gtk
from matplotlib.figure import Figure
import numpy as np

These are the usual imports along with the gtk module, which is required to access the GTK+ library functions. Once imported, the gtk module also takes care of GTK+ environment initialization.

It is also common to find this type of import:

import pygtk
pygtk.require('2.0')
import gtk

It's useful to differentiate between multiple copies of PyGTK that might be installed on our system. The require() function specifies that we need version 2.0, which covers all the versions...