An error in use of inset_axes of mpl_toolkits in Jupyter Notebook

[jinshisai]

Description

I had an issue that plots of a color bar with inset_axes of mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1.inset_locator failed in jupyter notebook, although it works if I simply run through a python script or in ipython. I faced the following error messages:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
File ~/.pyenv/versions/3.11.4/lib/python3.11/site-packages/IPython/core/formatters.py:340, in BaseFormatter.__call__(self, obj)
    338     pass
    339 else:
--> 340     return printer(obj)
    341 # Finally look for special method names
    342 method = get_real_method(obj, self.print_method)

File ~/.pyenv/versions/3.11.4/lib/python3.11/site-packages/IPython/core/pylabtools.py:152, in print_figure(fig, fmt, bbox_inches, base64, **kwargs)
    149     from matplotlib.backend_bases import FigureCanvasBase
    150     FigureCanvasBase(fig)
--> 152 fig.canvas.print_figure(bytes_io, **kw)
    153 data = bytes_io.getvalue()
    154 if fmt == 'svg':

File ~/.pyenv/versions/3.11.4/lib/python3.11/site-packages/matplotlib/backend_bases.py:2353, in FigureCanvasBase.print_figure(self, filename, dpi, facecolor, edgecolor, orientation, format, bbox_inches, pad_inches, bbox_extra_artists, backend, **kwargs)
   2350         bbox_inches = bbox_inches.padded(pad_inches)
   2352     # call adjust_bbox to save only the given area
-> 2353     restore_bbox = _tight_bbox.adjust_bbox(
   2354         self.figure, bbox_inches, self.figure.canvas.fixed_dpi)
   2356     _bbox_inches_restore = (bbox_inches, restore_bbox)
   2357 else:

File ~/.pyenv/versions/3.11.4/lib/python3.11/site-packages/matplotlib/_tight_bbox.py:28, in adjust_bbox(fig, bbox_inches, fixed_dpi)
     26 locator = ax.get_axes_locator()
     27 if locator is not None:
---> 28     ax.apply_aspect(locator(ax, None))
     29 locator_list.append(locator)
     30 current_pos = ax.get_position(original=False).frozen()

File ~/.pyenv/versions/3.11.4/lib/python3.11/site-packages/matplotlib/colorbar.py:156, in _ColorbarAxesLocator.__call__(self, ax, renderer)
    154 def __call__(self, ax, renderer):
    155     if self._orig_locator is not None:
--> 156         pos = self._orig_locator(ax, renderer)
    157     else:
    158         pos = ax.get_position(original=True)

File ~/.pyenv/versions/3.11.4/lib/python3.11/site-packages/mpl_toolkits/axes_grid1/inset_locator.py:73, in AnchoredLocatorBase.__call__(self, ax, renderer)
     71 def __call__(self, ax, renderer):
     72     self.axes = ax
---> 73     bbox = self.get_window_extent(renderer)
     74     px, py = self.get_offset(bbox.width, bbox.height, 0, 0, renderer)
     75     bbox_canvas = Bbox.from_bounds(px, py, bbox.width, bbox.height)

File ~/.pyenv/versions/3.11.4/lib/python3.11/site-packages/matplotlib/offsetbox.py:399, in OffsetBox.get_window_extent(self, renderer)
    396 def get_window_extent(self, renderer=None):
    397     # docstring inherited
    398     if renderer is None:
--> 399         renderer = self.figure._get_renderer()
    400     bbox = self.get_bbox(renderer)
    401     try:  # Some subclasses redefine get_offset to take no args.

AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute '_get_renderer'

Reproduce

The exact code I run for a test is here.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1.inset_locator import inset_axes


# simulate data
x = np.linspace(-1,1,32)
y = x.copy()
xx, yy = np.meshgrid(x, y)
dd = np.exp(- xx*xx - yy*yy)


# plot
# figure
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
# color plot
im = ax.pcolor(xx, yy, dd, shading='auto')

cax = inset_axes(ax,
                 width = '3%',
                 height = '100%',
                 bbox_to_anchor = (1. + 0.03, 0., 1., 1.), 
                 loc = 'lower left', 
                 bbox_transform = ax.transAxes, 
                 borderpad = 0.
                )
#plt.colorbar(im)
plt.colorbar(im, cax=cax)
plt.show()

Expected behavior

A plot like this was expected and it indeed appeared when the script was run by python or in ipython.

Context

• Operating System and version: Mac OS Ventura 13.5.1; M1 chip
• Browser and version: Chrome Version 116.0.5845.140

• Jupyter Notebook version: 7.0.2

The version of matplotlib was 3.7.2.

Troubleshoot Output

sys.version:
	3.11.4 (main, Aug 10 2023, 18:19:19) [Clang 14.0.3 (clang-1403.0.22.14.1)]
platform.platform():

macOS-13.5.1-arm64-arm-64bit
pip list:

Package                   Version

------------------------- -----------

anyio                     3.7.1

appnope                   0.1.3

argon2-cffi               21.3.0

argon2-cffi-bindings      21.2.0

arrow                     1.2.3

astropy                   5.3.1

astropy-helpers           4.0.1

astroquery                0.4.6

asttokens                 2.2.1

async-lru                 2.0.4

attrs                     23.1.0

Babel                     2.12.1

backcall                  0.2.0

beautifulsoup4            4.12.2

bettermoments             1.8.5

bleach                    6.0.0

bs4                       0.0.1

casa-formats-io           0.2.1

certifi                   2023.7.22

cffi                      1.15.1

charset-normalizer        3.2.0

click                     8.1.7

cloudpickle               2.2.1

comm                      0.1.4

contourpy                 1.1.0

corner                    2.2.2

cycler                    0.11.0

dask                      2023.9.1

debugpy                   1.6.7.post1

decorator                 5.1.1

defusedxml                0.7.1

dynesty                   2.1.2

emcee                     3.1.4

executing                 1.2.0

fastjsonschema            2.18.0

fonttools                 4.42.0

fqdn                      1.5.1

fsspec                    2023.9.0

html5lib                  1.1

idna                      3.4

imfits                    2.0.1

importlib-metadata        6.8.0

iniconfig                 2.0.0

ipykernel                 6.25.1

ipython                   8.14.0

ipython-genutils          0.2.0

ipywidgets                8.1.0

isoduration               20.11.0

jaraco.classes            3.3.0

jedi                      0.19.0

Jinja2                    3.1.2

joblib                    1.3.2

json5                     0.9.14

jsonpointer               2.4

jsonschema                4.19.0

jsonschema-specifications 2023.7.1

jupyter                   1.0.0

jupyter_client            8.3.0

jupyter-console           6.6.3

jupyter_core              5.3.1

jupyter-events            0.7.0

jupyter-lsp               2.2.0

jupyter_server            2.7.0

jupyter_server_terminals  0.4.4

jupyterlab                4.0.4

jupyterlab-pygments       0.2.2

jupyterlab_server         2.24.0

jupyterlab-widgets        3.0.8

keyring                   24.2.0

kiwisolver                1.4.4

locket                    1.0.0

MarkupSafe                2.1.3

matplotlib                3.7.2

matplotlib-inline         0.1.6

mistune                   3.0.1

more-itertools            10.1.0

nbclient                  0.8.0

nbconvert                 7.7.3

nbformat                  5.9.2

nest-asyncio              1.5.7

notebook                  7.0.2

notebook_shim             0.2.3

numpy                     1.25.2

overrides                 7.4.0

packaging                 23.1

pandas                    2.0.3

pandocfilters             1.5.0

parso                     0.8.3

partd                     1.4.0

pexpect                   4.8.0

pickleshare               0.7.5

Pillow                    10.0.0

pip                       23.2.1

platformdirs              3.10.0

pluggy                    1.2.0

prometheus-client         0.17.1

prompt-toolkit            3.0.39

psutil                    5.9.5

ptyprocess                0.7.0

pure-eval                 0.2.2

pycparser                 2.21

pyerfa                    2.0.0.3

Pygments                  2.16.1

pyparsing                 3.0.9

pyspeckit                 1.0.1

pytest                    7.4.0

python-dateutil           2.8.2

python-json-logger        2.0.7

pytz                      2023.3

pyvo                      1.4.2

PyYAML                    6.0.1

pyzmq                     25.1.1

qtconsole                 5.4.3

QtPy                      2.3.1

radio-beam                0.3.4

referencing               0.30.2

requests                  2.31.0

rfc3339-validator         0.1.4

rfc3986-validator         0.1.1

rpds-py                   0.9.2

scikit-learn              1.3.0

scipy                     1.11.1

seaborn                   0.12.2

Send2Trash                1.8.2

setuptools                68.2.2

six                       1.16.0

sniffio                   1.3.0

soupsieve                 2.4.1

spectral-cube             0.6.2

stack-data                0.6.2

terminado                 0.17.1

threadpoolctl             3.2.0

tinycss2                  1.2.1

toolz                     0.12.0

tornado                   6.3.2

tqdm                      4.66.0

traitlets                 5.9.0

tzdata                    2023.3

uri-template              1.3.0

urllib3                   2.0.4

wcwidth                   0.2.6

webcolors                 1.13

webencodings              0.5.1

websocket-client          1.6.1

wheel                     0.41.2

widgetsnbextension        4.0.8

zeus-mcmc                 2.5.4

zipp                      3.16.2

Command Line Output

Browser Output

[JasonWeill]

@jinshisai Thank you for opening this! Are you using side-by-side rendering when you run the code above? Can you attach a screen shot of what your notebook looks like after you run this code cell?

[jinshisai]

Hi Jason,
Here is a screen shot of my notebook window when I run the code:

The bottom of the error messages are cut off in this screen shot, but they are the same as the ones I posted. I am not sure what is exactly side-by-side rendering to be honest, but the figure is supposed to appear below the cell.

[RRosio]

Hi @jinshisai, thank you for the additional information. As @krassowski suggested in the Triage meeting, if you could please open an issue in https://github.com/matplotlib/ipympl, this is where you might find more information about addressing this issue.

[jinshisai]

Hi @RRosio, ok thanks. I opened an issue in https://github.com/matplotlib/ipympl. However, ipympl has not been installed when I faced the issue. Anyway, I will wait their response. Thank you for your help.

[rcomer]

Hi, I believe this one was a Matplotlib bug which is fixed in v3.7.3. You can reproduce in a regular script if you use plt.savefig(filename, bbox_inches="tight”). I understand the inline backend uses bbox_inches="tight” automatically.
matplotlib/matplotlib#26287

[jinshisai]

Hi @rcomer, thanks for letting me know that. I just saw your information here, and was able to solve the issue by using matplotlib v3.8.0. Thanks again for your assistance!