This is a Cython wrapper around Tim Pearson's PGPLOT. Although not as fully featured as matplotlib, PGPLOT is very easy to use, produces decent simple plots, and above all is much faster than matplotlib, so it has its niche.
You must have pgplot, python and 'numpy' installed. Be warned, pgplot installation can be a right pain. At minimum pgplot and numpy must have been compiled with the same fortran compiler e.g. either g77/g95 or, most likely nowadays, gfortran.
On Macs, I strongly recommend installing using homebrew. You'll have to tap the linked recipe.
PGPLOT's PNG drivers seem to cause some trouble nowadays and you may want to give up on them. If you do, set the environment variable PGPLOT_PNG to "false" and trm.pgplot will be installed without PNG support.
Another gotcha when installing PGPLOT is that if you don't have g77 you'll probably have to manually edit the makefile to change the FORTRAN compiler:
FCOMPL=gfortran
If you do this, you'll also have to make sure the shared PGPLOT library is linked against the gfortran and x11 libraries, e.g change the SHARED_LD entry to:
SHARED_LD=gcc -shared -o libpgplot.so -lgfortran -lX11
Once you have managed to install PGPLOT, don't forget to define the environment variable PGPLOT_DIR as needed by PGPLOT; this is used to pick up the location of the header file cpgplot.h and libraries. e.g. If using bash, you would have somewhere in your .bashrc config file something like:
export PGPLOT_DIR=/path/to/my/pgplot
and the directory pointed to should include files like cgplot.h, libpgplot.a, libpgplot.so and similar. I have had issues with linking in the PNG library and have given up, but some people need to use because that's how their PGPLOT was built, therefore you must now define an environment variable PGPLOT_PNG to be either "true" or "false" to select or ignore the PNG libraries.
Once you have passed this painful hurdle, its the usual python setup, e.g.
pip3 install . --user
run from the directory cloned directory containing this README. It is still possible that it needs extra libraries; if so look at the list "libraries" in setup.py
Most of the routines use the same arguments as their PGPLOT counterparts, e.g. pgsci(2) sets the colour index to number 2 (usually red), however some shortcuts are possible since Python arrays know their length so rather than cpgline(n,*x,*y), it is pgline(x,y). These differences are documented e.g. "pydoc trm.pgplot.pgline", etc. I have not implemented every single routine as yet but would hope to do so. If you are desperate for your favourite to appear then let me know; it does not take long.
One extra is "PGdevice", a class to help close plots and handle multiple plots. Its use is optional.
There are other hand-crafted wrappers of PGPLOT out there. I thought a Cython version would be easier to maintain and wanted to adjust a few features.
Tom Marsh