This is a new, essentially complete implementation of a cairo backend for Matplotlib. It can be used in combination with a Qt, GTK, Tk, wx, or macOS UI, or non-interactively (i.e., to save figure to various file formats).
Noteworthy points include:
- Improved accuracy (e.g., with marker positioning, quad meshes, and text kerning; floating point surfaces are supported with cairo≥1.17.2).
- Optional multithreaded drawing of markers and path collections.
- Optional support for complex text layout (right-to-left languages, etc.) and OpenType font features (see examples/opentype_features.py), and partial support for color fonts (e.g., emojis), using Raqm. Note that Raqm depends by default on Fribidi, which is licensed under the LGPLv2.1+.
- Support for embedding URLs in PDF (but not SVG) output (requires cairo≥1.15.4).
- Support for multi-page output both for PDF and PS (Matplotlib only supports multi-page PDF).
- Support for custom blend modes (see examples/operators.py).
- Improved font embedding in vector formats: fonts are typically subsetted and embedded in their native format (Matplotlib≥3.5 also provides improved font embedding).
mplcairo requires
- Python≥3.7,
- Matplotlib≥2.2 (declared as
install_requires), - on Linux and macOS, pycairo≥1.16.0 [1] (declared as
install_requires), - on Windows, cairo≥1.11.4 [2] (shipped with the wheel).
It is recommended to use cairo≥1.17.4.
Additionally, building mplcairo from source requires
- pybind11≥2.6.0 [3] (declared as
setup_requires), - pycairo≥1.16.0 (declared as
setup_requires).
As usual, install using pip:
$ pip install mplcairo # from PyPI
$ pip install git+https://github.com/matplotlib/mplcairo # from GithubNote that wheels are not available for macOS<10.13, because the libc++ included with these versions is too old and vendoring of libc++ appears to be fragile. Help for packaging would be welcome.
mplcairo can use Raqm (≥0.7.0; ≥0.7.2 is recommended as it provides better
emoji support, especially in the presence of ligatures) for complex text layout
and handling of OpenType font features. Refer to the instructions on that
project's website for installation on Linux and macOS. On Windows, consider
using Christoph Gohlke's build (the directory containing
libraqm.dll and libfribidi-0.dll need to be added to the DLL search
path).
| [1] | pycairo 1.16.0 added We do not actually rely on pycairo's Python bindings. Rather, specifying a dependency on pycairo is a convenient way to specify a dependency on cairo (≥1.13.1, for pycairo≥1.14.0) itself, and allows us to load cairo at runtime instead of linking to it (simplifying the build of self-contained wheels). On Windows, this strategy is (AFAIK) not possible, so we explicitly link against the cairo DLL. |
| [2] | cairo 1.11.4 added mesh gradient support (used by cairo 1.15.4 added support for PDF metadata and links; the presence of this feature is detected at runtime. cairo 1.17.2 added support for floating point surfaces, usable with
cairo 1.17.4 fixed a long-standing rasterization bug (in dfe3aa6). |
| [3] | pybind11 2.6.0 is needed to support Python 3.9. |
On Fedora, the package is available as python-mplcairo.
This section is only relevant if you wish to build mplcairo yourself, or package it for redistribution. Otherwise, proceed to the Use section.
In all cases, once the dependencies described below are installed, mplcairo
can be built and installed using any of the standard commands (pip wheel
--no-deps ., pip install ., pip install -e . and python setup.py
build_ext -i being the most relevant ones).
The following additional dependencies are required:
a C++ compiler with C++17 support, e.g. GCC≥7.2 or Clang≥5.0.
cairo and FreeType headers, and pkg-config information to locate them.
If using conda, they can be installed using
conda install -y -c conda-forge pycairo pkg-config
as pycairo (also a dependency) depends on cairo, which depends on freetype. Note that cairo and pkg-config from the
anacondachannel will not work.On Linux, they can also be installed with your distribution's package manager (Arch:
cairo, Debian/Ubuntu:libcairo2-dev, Fedora:cairo-devel).
Raqm (≥0.2) headers are also needed, but will be automatically downloaded if not found.
conda's compilers (gxx_linux-64 on the anaconda channel) currently
interact poorly with installing cairo and pkg-config from conda-forge, so you are on your own to install a recent compiler
(e.g., using your distribution's package manager). You may want to set the
CC and CXX environment variables to point to your C++ compiler if it is
nonstandard [4]. In that case, be careful to set them to e.g. g++-7 and
not gcc-7, otherwise the compilation will succeed but the shared object
will be mis-linked and fail to load.
The manylinux wheel is built using tools/build-manylinux-wheel.sh.
| [4] | distutils uses CC for compiling C++ sources but CXX for
linking them (don't ask). You may run into additional issues if CC or
CXX has multiple words; e.g., if CC is set to ccache g++, you
also need to set CXX to ccache gcc. |
Clang≥5.0 can be installed from conda's anaconda channel (conda
install -c anaconda clangxx_osx-64), or can also be installed with Homebrew
(brew install llvm). Note that Homebrew's llvm formula is keg-only, i.e.
it requires manual modifications to the PATH and LDFLAGS (as documented by
brew info llvm).
On macOS<10.14, it is additionally necessary to use clang<8.0 (e.g. with brew
install llvm@7) as clang 8.0 appears to believe that code relying on C++17
can only be run on macOS≥10.14+.
The macOS wheel is built using tools/build-macos-wheel.sh, which relies on
delocate-wheel (to vendor a recent version of libc++). Currently, it can only
be built from a Homebrew-clang wheel, not a conda-clang wheel (due to some path
intricacies...).
As I can personally only test the macOS build on CI, any help with the build and the packaging on that platform would be welcome.
The following additional dependencies are required:
VS2019 (The exact minimum version is unknown, but it is known that mplcairo fails to build on the Github Actions
windows-2016agent and requires thewindows-2019agent.)cairo headers and import and dynamic libraries (
cairo.libandcairo.dll) with FreeType support. Note that this excludes, in particular, most Anaconda and conda-forge builds: they do not include FreeType support.The currently preferred solution is to get the headers e.g. from a Linux distribution package, the DLL from Christoph Gohlke's pycairo build, and generate the import library oneself using
dumpbinandlib.Alternatively, very recent conda-forge builds (≥1.16.0 build 1005) do include FreeType support. In order to use them, the include path needs to be modified as described below. (This is currently intentionally disabled by default to avoid confusing errors if the cairo build is too old.)
FreeType headers and import and dynamic libraries (
freetype.libandfreetype.dll), which can be retrieved from https://github.com/ubawurinna/freetype-windows-binaries, or alternatively using conda:conda install -y freetype
The (standard) CL and LINK environment variables (which always get
prepended respectively to the invocations of the compiler and the linker)
should be set as follows:
set CL=/IC:\path\to\dir\containing\cairo.h /IC:\same\for\ft2build.h set LINK=/LIBPATH:C:\path\to\dir\containing\cairo.lib /LIBPATH:C:\same\for\freetype.lib
In particular, in order to use a conda-forge cairo (as described above),
{sys.prefix}\Library\include\cairo needs to be added to the include path.
Moreover, we also need to find cairo.dll and freetype.dll and copy
them next to mplcairo's extension module. As the dynamic libraries are
typically found next to import libraries, we search the /LIBPATH: entries
in the LINK environment variable and copy the first cairo.dll and
freetype.dll found there.
The script tools/build-windows-wheel.py automates the retrieval of the
cairo (assuming that a Gohlke pycairo is already installed) and FreeType dlls,
and the wheel build.
On Linux and Windows, mplcairo can be used as any normal Matplotlib backend:
call e.g. matplotlib.use("module://mplcairo.qt") before importing pyplot,
add a backend: module://mplcairo.qt line in your matplotlibrc, or set
the MPLBACKEND environment variable to module://mplcairo.qt. More
specifically, the following backends are provided:
module://mplcairo.base(No GUI, but can output to EPS, PDF, PS, SVG, and SVGZ using cairo's implementation, rather than Matplotlib's),module://mplcairo.gtk(GTK widget, copying data from a cairo image surface — GTK3 or GTK4 can be selected by callinggi.require_version("Gtk", "3.0")orgi.require_version("Gtk", "4.0")before importing the backend),module://mplcairo.gtk_native(GTK widget, directly drawn onto as a native surface; does not and cannot support blitting — see above for version selection),module://mplcairo.qt(Qt widget, copying data from a cairo image surface — select the binding to use by importing it before mplcairo, or by setting theQT_APIenvironment variable),module://mplcairo.tk(Tk widget, copying data from a cairo image surface),module://mplcairo.wx(wx widget, copying data from a cairo image surface),module://mplcairo.macosx(macOS widget, copying data from a cairo image surface).
On macOS, it is necessary to explicitly import mplcairo before importing
Matplotlib due to incompatibilities associated with the use of a recent
libc++. As such, the most practical option is to import mplcairo, then call
e.g. matplotlib.use("module://mplcairo.macosx").
To use cairo rendering in Jupyter's inline mode, patch, in your
ipython_config.py:
import mplcairo.base
import ipykernel.pylab.backend_inline
ipykernel.pylab.backend_inline.new_figure_manager = \
mplcairo.base.new_figure_managerAlternatively, set the MPLCAIRO_PATCH_AGG environment variable to a
non-empty value to fully replace the Agg renderer by the cairo renderer
throughout Matplotlib. However, this approach is inefficient (due to the need
of copies and conversions between premultiplied ARGB32 and straight RGBA8888
buffers); additionally, it does not work with the wx and macosx backends due
to peculiarities of the corresponding canvas classes. On the other hand, this
is currently the only way in which the webagg-based backends (e.g., Jupyter's
interactive widgets) are supported.
At import-time, mplcairo will attempt to load Raqm. The use of that library
can be controlled and checked using the set_options and get_options
functions.
The examples directory contains a few cases where the output of this renderer is arguably more accurate than the one of the default renderer, Agg:
- circle_markers.py and square_markers.py: more accurate and faster marker stamping.
- marker_stamping.py: more accurate marker stamping.
- quadmesh.py: better antialiasing of quad meshes, fewer artefacts with masked data.
- text_kerning.py: improved text kerning.
Install (in the virtualenv) pytest>=3.1.0 and pytest-benchmark, then
call (e.g.):
pytest --benchmark-group-by=fullfunc --benchmark-timer=time.process_timeKeep in mind that conda-forge's cairo is (on my setup) ~2× slower than a "native" build of cairo.
Run run-mpl-test-suite.py (which depends on pytest>=3.2.2) to run the
Matplotlib test suite with the Agg backend patched by the mplcairo backend.
Note that Matplotlib must be installed with its test data, which is not the
case when it is installed from conda or from most Linux distributions; instead,
it should be installed from PyPI or from source.
Nearly all image comparison tests "fail" as the renderers are fundamentally
different; currently, the intent is to manually check the diff images. Passing
--tolerance=inf marks these tests as "passed" (while still textually
reporting the image differences) so that one can spot issues not related to
rendering differences. In practice, --tolerance=50 appears to be enough.
Some other (non-image-comparison) tests are also known to fail (they are listed
in ISSUES.rst, with the relevant explanations), and automatically skipped.
Run run-examples.py to run some examples that exercise some more aspects of
mplcairo.
The artist antialiasing property can be set to any of the cairo_antialias_t
enum values, or True (the default) or False (which is synonym to
NONE).
Setting antialiasing to True uses FAST antialiasing for lines thicker
than 1/3px and BEST for lines thinner than that: for lines thinner
than 1/3px, the former leads to artefacts such as lines disappearing in
certain sections (see e.g. test_cycles.test_property_collision_plot after
forcing the antialiasing to FAST). The threshold of 1/3px was determined
empirically, see examples/thin_line_antialiasing.py.
Note that in order to set the lines.antialiased or patch.antialiased
rcparams to a cairo_antialias_t enum value, it is necessary to bypass
rcparam validation, using, e.g.
dict.__setitem__(plt.rcParams, "lines.antialiased", antialias_t.FAST)The text.antialiased rcparam can likewise be set to any
cairo_antialias_t enum value, or True (the default, which maps to
SUBPIXEL — GRAY is not sufficient to benefit from Raqm's subpixel
positioning; see also cairo issue #152) or False (which
maps to NONE).
Note that in rare cases, FAST antialiasing can trigger a "double free or
corruption" bug in cairo (#44). If you hit this problem,
consider using BEST or NONE antialiasing (depending on your quality and
speed requirements).
For fast drawing of path with many segments, the agg.path.chunksize rcparam
should be set to e.g. 1000 (see examples/time_drawing_per_element.py for the
determination of this value); this causes longer paths to be split into
individually rendered sections of 1000 segments each (directly rendering longer
paths appears to have slightly superlinear complexity).
The path.simplify_threshold rcparam is used to control the accuracy of
marker stamping, down to an arbitrarily chosen threshold of 1/16px. If the
threshold is set to a lower value, the exact (slower) marker drawing path will
be used. Marker stamping is also implemented for scatter plots (which can have
multiple colors). Likewise, markers of different sizes get mapped into markers
of discretized sizes, with an error bounded by the threshold.
NOTE: pcolor and mplot3d's plot_surface display some artefacts
where the facets join each other. This is because these functions internally
use a PathCollection; this triggers the approximate stamping, and
even without it (by setting path.simplify_threshold to zero), cairo's
rasterization of the edge between the facets is poor. pcolormesh (which
internally uses a QuadMesh) should generally be preferred over pcolor
anyways. plot_surface could likewise instead represent the surface using
QuadMesh, which is drawn without such artefacts.
In order to use a specific font that Matplotlib may be unable to use, pass a filename directly:
from matplotlib.font_manager import FontProperties
fig.text(.5, .5, "hello, world",
fontproperties=FontProperties(fname="/path/to/font.ttf"))or more simply, with Matplotlib≥3.3:
from pathlib import Path
fig.text(.5, .5, "hello, world", font=Path("/path/to/font.ttf"))mplcairo still relies on Matplotlib's font cache, so fonts unsupported by Matplotlib remain unavailable by other means.
For TTC fonts (and, more generally, font formats that include multiple font
faces in a single file), the nth font (n≥0) can be selected by appending
#n to the filename (e.g., "/path/to/font.ttc#1").
OpenType font features can be selected by appending |feature,...
to the filename, followed by a HarfBuzz feature string (e.g.,
"/path/to/font.otf|frac,onum"); see examples/opentype_features.py.
The syntaxes for selecting TTC subfonts and OpenType font features are experimental and may change, especially if such features are implemented in Matplotlib itself.
Color fonts (e.g. emojis) are handled.
Matplotlib's PdfPages class is deeply tied with the builtin backend_pdf
(in fact, it cannot even be used with Matplotlib's own cairo backend).
Instead, use mplcairo.multipage.MultiPage for multi-page PDF and PS output.
The API is similar:
from mplcairo.multipage import MultiPage
fig1 = ...
fig2 = ...
with MultiPage(path_or_stream, metadata=...) as mp:
mp.savefig(fig1)
mp.savefig(fig2)See the class' docstring for additional information.
cairo is able to write PDF 1.4 and 1.5 (defaulting to 1.5), PostScript levels 2
and 3 (defaulting to 3), and SVG versions 1.1 and 1.2 (defaulting to 1.1).
This can be controlled by passing a metadata dict to savefig with a
MaxVersion entry, which must be one of the strings "1.4"/"1.5" (for
pdf), "2"/"3" (for ps), or "1.1"/"1.2" (for svg).
Setting the MPLCAIRO_SCRIPT_SURFACE environment variable before mplcairo
is imported to vector or raster allows one to save figures (with
savefig) in the .cairoscript format, which is a "native script that
matches the cairo drawing model". The value of the variable determines the
rendering path used (e.g., whether marker stamping is used at all). This may
be helpful for troubleshooting purposes.
Note that this may crash the process after the file is written, due to cairo issue #277.
draw_markers draws a marker at each control point of the given path, which
is the documented behavior, even though all builtin renderers only draw markers
at straight or Bézier segment ends.
Due to missing support from cairo:
- SVG output does not support global metadata or set URLs or ids on any element, as cairo provides no support to do so.
- PS output does not respect SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.
- PS output does not support the
Creatormetadata key; however it supports theTitlekey. - The following rcparams have no effect:
pdf.fonttype(font type is selected by cairo internally),pdf.inheritcolor(effectively alwaysFalse),pdf.use14corefonts(effectively alwaysFalse),ps.fonttype(font type is selected by cairo internally),ps.useafm(effectively alwaysFalse),svg.fonttype(effectively always"path", see cairo issue #253),svg.hashsalt.
Additionally, the quality, optimize, and progressive parameters to
savefig, which have been removed in Matplotlib 3.5, are not supported.
- Cache eviction policy and persistent cache for
draw_path_collection. - Path simplification (although cairo appears to use vertex reduction and Douglas-Peucker internally?).
- Use QtOpenGLWidget and the cairo-gl backend.
They are very slow (try running examples/mplot3d/wire3d_animation.py) and
render math poorly (try title(r"$\sqrt{2}$")).