[Matplotlib-users] Error saving to pdf with savefig on Mac OS X 10.6.7 (Snow Leopard)

Dear List,

I use Matplotlib bundled with the Enthought Python Distribution (EPD) (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions). After a recent update, I find that my Python code (run either in a iPython shell or in bash shell) crashes while attempting to save figures to pdf files using savefig(). However, saving to other formats (png, ps, eps or svg) works fine. The error message echoed to the terminal are "Bus error" with 32-bit EPD and "Abort trap" with 64-bit EPD. Also, converting to pdf from one of the other four formats using *nix utilities like convert or ps2pdf go through fine (prompting to suspect that savefig has a bug). Unfortunately, in a short time, by looking at pyplot.py, I couldn't determine what could be causing this. Therefore, it would be really helpful if list members can provide any hints to fix this. I need to save a bunch of figures from existing code, and it would be great if I could do so without having to modify all savefig statements; additionally, I would prefer not to write a shell script to perform the conversions to pdf considering the different directories that my figures are saved to.

Also, a few searches using google did not throw up anything useful (although one relevant list archive suggested that if EPD alone is installed on a Mac, this error shouldn't be seen. Since this is the case for me, it didn't help.). The following are my specifications:

Platform: Mac OS X 10.6.7
Python version: 2.7.1
Matplotlib version: 1.0.1
EPD versions: 7.0-2 (both 32-bit and 64-bit)

(Should I also post this to matplotlib-devel ?)

Thanks and Regards,
Kaushik Kalyanaraman