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In using any package, the name of a function should be obvious so that our brain does not keep remembering weird features.

So in matplotlib, every time I use suptitle, I have no idea what "sup" is for. Does anyone have this problem or do we just use it since the standard said so?

tdy
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Ed Gan
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    I always thought it meant super title since it's above all the other titles on the ax objects. That is based on no source or reference. – O.rka Mar 30 '22 at 04:52
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    Though the duplicate does not reference any "official" source, so it could be a personal interpretation ;) – mozway Mar 30 '22 at 05:47
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    Good point. Turns out the devs have officially confirmed it on their issue tracker. @O.rka's "super title" guess is correct. – tdy Mar 30 '22 at 08:22
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    Nice catch @tdy ;) – mozway Mar 30 '22 at 08:29
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    Haha, wow. One of my greatest achievements. – O.rka Mar 30 '22 at 17:48
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    Certainly an example 40+ years on in the struggles around software documentation of understanding what the purpose of documentation is: not to reiterate what is obvious about the software ("Add a centered suptitle to the figure." ... Ummm, thanks. Duh?); but to explain intentions, consequences, what can't be assumed or intuited (what is a "suptitle"? what is it intended for? where will it be placed in a graph ("centered", at least); will it launch nuclear bombs, or send all my private photos to Matplotlib?). A little exaggerated, but still documentation should be better than this by now. – GG2 Aug 05 '22 at 22:53
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    I mean, I thought it would add a little animated hip-hop dude to the center of all my graphs, like images in the center of a QR code, who said " 'sup " to everyone who viewed my figure. I'm disappointed now... – GG2 Aug 05 '22 at 22:58
  • i asked myself the same question, mainly because I've often confused it with the word "subtitle" (which makes no sense fort this purpose). What a terrible naming (IMHO) to save two characters and confuse people... but that's matplotlib standard i guess :) – tturbo Sep 28 '22 at 09:50

1 Answers1

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"Super title" is the official meaning. This has been confirmed by the matplotlib devs:

suptitle stands for super title. The word super comes from the latin language, meaning "above." A suptitle is hence a title that stands above the axes of the figure, on top of it. This is in contrast to a normal title which is bound to an axes.

tdy
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