Please add a generic "seaborn" style

[mwaskom]

I'm glad that matplotlib has included seaborn aesthetics in its built-in style sheets. However, the way that the different elements of the seaborn aesthetics were split up (i.e., that there are separate seaborn-darkgrid, seaborn-deep`, etc.) is both a little confusing and produces results that are, imo, visually unappealing.

I would much prefer if there were also a single "seaborn" style that encompasses seaborn-darkgrid, seaborn-deep, and seaborn-notebook, so that doing plt.style.use("seaborn") would create plots that look the same as actually importing seaborn.

[tacaswell]

Did that PR to put styles in style sheets get merged?

[mwaskom]

Not sure, but I just came across this which prompted the issue.

[WeatherGod]

Here is the PR that originally added the seaborn style sheets along with
discussion of rationale of splitting it up:
#4570

I have no problem with a unified seaborn style sheet, but right now, I
don't think we have the capability of recursively loading sheets as
specified in another sheet.

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 12:13 PM, Thomas A Caswell <notifications@github.com

wrote:

Did that PR to put styles in style sheets get merged?

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#6452 (comment)

[mwaskom]

But you could just put all of the aesthetics into one sheet, right?

[WeatherGod]

correct

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 12:18 PM, Michael Waskom notifications@github.com
wrote:

But you could just put all of the aesthetics into one sheet, right?

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#6452 (comment)

[mwaskom]

Hah, I see now that I initially advocated for what I'm now objecting to... Although I think what I probably had in mind was that seaborn-darkgrid would correspond to the default seaborn aesthetics, i.e. darkgrid + notebook + deep palette.

Anyway, seeing the result of my hasty suggestion, I do think that it's not ideal because users who want their plots to look "like seaborn" should probably be able to do so with minimal effort. Currently you'd have to be aware of a number of relatively internal seaborn details (like the bad name for the default palette).

I also think that having so many "seaborn" styles is likely very confusing in the context of tools like this, because they totally dominate the list. Ultimately what to do about that is up to you folks, but I'd suggest that it might be better to scale back the extent to which matplotlib styles fully replicate the aesthetic control that seaborn has. (Similarly, the "ggplot" style is just one of the many themes that ggplot can do).

[WeatherGod]

I would be completely in favor of putting in a consolidated "seaborn" style sheet. As for the other sheets, maybe a way to specify "sub-sheets" might help, perhaps? Is there any analogous concept in CSS?

[tacaswell]

I am 👍 on adding a single 'seaborn' sheet, but am a bit worried about removing styles that we have been shipping for a year.

[mwaskom]

Thanks @tacaswell !