Engines#
Overview#
fivecentplots is not a new graphics generation library. All plots are created using existing Python plotting packages.
fivecentplots was conceived around two guiding principles:
many users would benefit from a simplified API that still enables complex plots with customized styling
many users would benefit from being able to choose the plotting “engine” or package that meets their needs without having to learn a completely new API
For example, a user preparing plots for a paper in a scientific journal might prefer the quality rendering and rich feature set of matplotlib but while exploring experimental results in a jupyter notebook might instead prefer an interactive web-based plotting implementation like plotly or bokeh. The kwarg-based API of fivecentplots makes this kind of library switching incredibly easy, requiring only a single keyword (engine) to perform the toggle:
fcp.plot(df, x='Voltage', y='I [A]', legend='Die', col='Boost Level', ax_size=[225, 225],
filter='Substrate=="Si" & Target Wavelength==450 & Temperature [C]==25', engine='mpl', theme='gray')
fcp.plot(df, x='Voltage', y='I [A]', legend='Die', col='Boost Level', ax_size=[225, 225],
filter='Substrate=="Si" & Target Wavelength==450 & Temperature [C]==25', engine='plotly', theme='gray_plotly')
fcp.plot(df, x='Voltage', y='I [A]', legend='Die', col='Boost Level', ax_size=[225, 225],
filter='Substrate=="Si" & Target Wavelength==450 & Temperature [C]==25', engine='bokeh', theme='gray_bokeh')
Adding New Engines#
Each engine is a Layout class that lives in a separate file within fivecentplots/src/fivecentplots/engines and
inherits the BaseLayout class found in layout.py. This file exclusively contains all the plotting-module specific
code that is needed by fivecentplots.
Not seeing a plotly engine you need? Please join the effort and make one!
fivecentplots/src/fivecentplots/engines/new_engine_template.py is provided as a template to get started. Simply
(or maybe not that simply?) populate the functions in this template and bring your new engine to life.