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[Doc]: layout engine module tutorial #24347
Description
Documentation Link
No response
Problem
We got a shiny new layout engine module in https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/api/layout_engine_api.html in 3.6 c/0 of #20426 but there's no tutorial for it. I figure it's one of those things where if you know how to write a layout engine then the api docs are fine, but honestly I think a tutorial would at the least be useful for making it more discoverable and showing off its usability and how flexible it is.
Suggested improvement
A tutorial, or minimally an example, of making a custom layout engine. To start, something in the style of custom projections or custom units
Activity
timhoffm commentedon Nov 3, 2022
Writing Lay-out Engines should be very rare. I'm not convinced writing a tutorial on that is a good investment of time. Maybe it's enough to add a sentence to the API docs: "If you plan to implement your own layout engine and need help with that, do hesitate the matplotlib developers via ...".
jklymak commentedon Nov 3, 2022
Yes it's hard to think of a short enough toy layout engine where this would be any better than reading the source code for our existing layout engines. Maybe someone has a simple example they can gin up, but this really isn't meant to be a user facing change, but rather something someone could write an add-on package around. Or a ready answer to "I dont like how constrained layout does X".
timhoffm commentedon Feb 6, 2025
I'm closing this as not planned.
There's a minimal description in the
LayoutEngineclass ("To implement a custom LayoutEngine ..."). I believe people who are interested and able to write a layout engine are experienced enough to contact us if they need additional help.