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  • Spec: 3
  • Title: Methods on children of figures
  • Version: 0.1
  • Last-Modified: 2019-07-19
  • Authors: Jon Mease, Julia Signell,
  • Status: Active
  • Type: Standards
  • Content-Type: text/markdown
  • Created: 2019-07-19

Abstract

This spec describes a proposed shared API for accessing objects within the figure hierarchy from various plotting libraries.

This spec uses figure to refer to any object that has a visible representation but which can also be saved, exported, etc. This includes generic visualizations or animation that may or may not be a "plot" (axes, ticks, etc)?

When referring to parts of a figure (such as axes and ticks) we'll use the term: child.

When detailing a method, this spec uses FIGURE to refer to any specific figure object and LIBRARY to refer to any specific visualization library, and CHILD to refer to the child of a figure.

If a method doesn't make sense

If a given operation doesn't make sense for that library, then it can satisfy the spec by simply having that method return a message to that effect ("JSON support not available in LIBRARY").

Accessing root figure

Every child should know what figure it belongs to.

Proposal

Every object in the figure hierarchy should have a .root property that returns the parent figure, or if deeply nested, the grand or great-grandparent figure. If the object doesn't belong to a figure then it should return None.

What currently exists

plotly calls these "graph objects" and returns them on the figure property.