matplotlib-users Mailing List for matplotlib

On 7 Oct 2011, at 4:56 PM, Daniel Hyams wrote:

> I'm wanting to highlight the artist under the cursor with a  
> transparent Rectangle patch.  To do this, I have very, roughly, in a  
> mouse motion handler,
>
> under = self.figure.hitlist(ev)
> if under:
>    artist = under[0]
>    bbox = artist.get_window_extent()
>    highlight =  
> matplotlib 
> .patches 
> .Rectangle 
> (xy 
> = 
> bbox.min,width=bbox.width,height=bbox.height,alpha=0.2,color='yellow')
>    # further code to blit the last captured graph region with  
> highlight drawn on top
>
> The main problem is that all artists don't implement  
> get_window_extent(); a Text object does, and a legend object does,  
> but the Axis objects do not.
>
> So is there a general way to get the bounding box of an artist?

Did you ever find a way to get the bounding box of an artist?  I could  
use this too.

Michael.

I had found it reasonably straightforward to install matplotlib on 10.6 (much harder on 10.7 but that's a story that somebody more versed than I should tell).  I was stumped by trying to install basemap because I took the easy way out with the Geos dependency and installed the latter via mac port;  this, however, does not give you the include directory.  So, I removed Geos from my mac port tree and installed it by hand (in /Users/Shared so that I can see it easily).  Then I had to use "sudo python setup.py install" so that the setup could access the python installation.  The first test worked just fine so I appear to be in good shape.  FYI, tony rollett.