improve whats_new entry for prop cycler

[tacaswell]

@WeatherGod

Currently it mostly talks about the new rcparam

[cgohlke]

Please also document the new dependency on the cycler package. Or maybe bundle the single file in matplotlib/externals?

[tacaswell]

I am strongly 👎 on bundling into externals.

See #5073 for dependency documentation.

@cgohlke I don't remember if you saw it go by, but we do bundle six.

[WeatherGod]

The whats_new is already horrendously long. Do we really want to make it
longer? I should note that the linked source code example demonstrates both
the rc param and the set_prop_cycle.

If I have time today, I will put together a PR that makes various fixes and
improvements to whats_new (such as cbook.is_sequence_of_strings() in a
completely wrong location, and the classic/default style stuff tucked away
near the bottom).

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 10:26 AM, Thomas A Caswell <notifications@github.com

wrote:

I am strongly [image: 👎] on bundling into externals.

See #5073 #5073 for
dependency documentation.

@cgohlke https://github.com/cgohlke I don't remember if you saw it go
by, but we do bundle six.

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#5067 (comment)
.

[tacaswell]

Clearly we just need to release more often to keep the whats_new short

I think the property cycling should be one of the flag-ship features for this release to is deserves a better example than it has.

One thing that might help is to turn the entire rcparams section into a table...

[WeatherGod]

I very much agree with the need to release more often (as a side note, I
think landing MEP22/27 would be a good milestone for 2.1).

Let me first try cleaning up whats new. As for improving stuff for
prop_cycler, what might make more sense is to make a documentation page
specifically for all things related to cyclers and link to that. whats_new
really should only be a teaser.

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 11:25 AM, Thomas A Caswell <notifications@github.com

wrote:

Clearly we just need to release more often to keep the whats_new short [image:
]

I think the property cycling should be one of the flag-ship features for
this release to is deserves a better example than it has.

One thing that might help is to turn the entire rcparams section into a
table...

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#5067 (comment)
.

[cgohlke]

Related to not bundling cycler: I think it is no longer feasible to use bdist_wininst installers to install matplotlib and dependencies on Windows. We should consider to discontinue providing wininst installers and only support wheels. At that point it makes sense to also revert bundling six.

[tacaswell]

Do I want to ask why bdist_winist is no longer feasible? Is it worth pulling one of the core-devs who works an MS (Steve Dowre and Brett Cannon) into this discussion?

attn @matthew-brett as the main advocate for bundling six

[cgohlke]

There's no technical problem building bdist_wininst installers for matplotlib. But since I switched to wheels on my website it has become difficult/impossible to find pre-built bdist_wininst installers for matplotlib's dependencies (setuptools, pytz, python-dateutil, pyparsing, cycler, and even numpy) for all supported platforms. It is not a good idea to mix package managers such as pip, bdist_wininst, and MSI.

[tacaswell]

@cgohlke Great, we will defer to your judgment on all matters windows installations.