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I am beginning to use Python for my scientific computing, and I am really liking it a lot, however I am confused by a feature of the matplotlib.pylab.legend function. In particular, the location feature allows one to specifiy the location of their legend using numbers, following this scheme:

  • best -- 0
  • upper right -- 1
  • upper left -- 2
  • lower left -- 3
  • lower right -- 4
  • right -- 5
  • center left -- 6
  • center right -- 7
  • lower center -- 8
  • upper center -- 9
  • center -- 10

Does anyone know why you wouldn't use the ordering on the numpad? I.e. center -- 5, upper right -- 9, etc.

I am just curious if anyone knows.

jdg
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  • You usually specify the string `'center'` in place of `10`. Try it. – Blender May 30 '12 at 20:58
  • well, maybe the developers were primarily coding in starbucks using their tiny teeny little numpad-less laptops. – nye17 May 30 '12 at 22:40
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    Actually, they were deliberately mimicking matlab's behavior at the time. See the "obsolete location values" section in the documentation for MATLAB's `legend`: http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/legend.html – Joe Kington May 31 '12 at 01:41

1 Answers1

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The docs show this example:

legend( ('label1', 'label2', 'label3'), loc='upper left')

Presumably, you could write loc=2, but why would you? It's much more readable to use the English word.

As to why they didn't enumerate the values to align with the numeric keypad, I presume they weren't thinking about the numeric keypad at the time.

Edit: It's worth including here the full text of Joe Kington's comment:

Actually, they were deliberately mimicking matlab's behavior at the time. See the "obsolete location values" section in the documentation for MATLAB's legend: mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/legend.html

Community
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Steven Rumbalski
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