How to change the color of lines and the format of picture frames? Is it ok to adjust to your favorite color?

[EVElove444]

How to change the color of lines and the format of picture frames? Is it ok to adjust to your favorite color? I am using the. exe version of Windows.

[ebranlard]

Dear @EVElove444

Thanks for your question and sorry for the time it took me to answer.
Currently, the easiest way to customize the default plot styling would be to setup a matplotlibrc file.

Where to put the matplotlibrc file
There are two possible locations where to put such file (see more help here):

1. In the "folder where pyDatView" starts (recommended).
2. C:/Users/XXX/.matplotlib/matplolibrc (where XXX is your username) On Linux it would be .config/matplotlib/matplotlibrc

The issue with option 2 is that this will also affect your regular python plots outside of pyDatView.

For option 1, the folder where pyDatView starts in by default is: %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% (C:/Users/XXX/), so you could place a matplotlibrc file there.

You can also change this location, by editing the pyDatView shortcut as follows. In the windows file menu, search for pyDatView > "Open File location" (likely it will be C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs)
Right click on the pyDatView shortcut, and change the location of "Starts In". to a folder where your matplotlibrc file is.

Content of the matplotlibrc file
You'll find all the possible options for the matlplotlibrc file here. At the moment, some options are overriden by pyDatView (based on the options you see when you click on the button next to "save", like grid properties, fonts, linewidth), but I can try to change this in the future. I can also try to add the location of the matplolibrc file used and the folder pyDatView was started in in the GUI (in Help>About, see #189 #190).

To only change the colors, you would need a line like this in the matplotlibrc file:

axes.prop_cycle: cycler('color', ['b', 'g', 'r', 'c', 'm', 'y'])

Here's a sample matplotlibrc file you could use in the past (not for pyDatView):

## matplotlibrc configuration file
axes.prop_cycle: cycler('color', ['k', 'b', 'g', 'r', 'c', 'm', 'y'])
xtick.direction: in
ytick.direction: in
xtick.top  : True
ytick.right : True

I hope that helps.