Plotting

Everything else in geomotif is dependency-free. This module is not: it needs matplotlib, which is why it is behind an extra.

pip install 'geomotif[plot]'

Importing geomotif.plotting without matplotlib raises at import time with a message that says which extra to install. Nothing else in the library imports it, so the rest works untouched on a machine that has not got it.

One design

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

from geomotif.plotting import plot_design

plot_design(design, show_points=True, center=(0, 0), title="my spiral")
plt.show()

plot_design draws onto an axes and returns it, creating a styled figure when you do not pass one. Its strokes become lines and its loose points become markers — always, since a loose point is the only thing a scatter motif has to show.

The options worth knowing:

Option	Effect
show_points=True	draw a marker at every point, not just the line
guide=	a second, smoother design drawn faintly underneath — the curve the points sit on
center=	mark a focal point, for spirals and rosettes
label_endpoints=True	annotate the first and last point of each stroke
ax=	draw into an axes you already have
palette=	LIGHT or DARK

Several designs

from geomotif.plotting import plot_grid

fig = plot_grid(
    [
        ("linear", linear_design, {}),
        ("power 2.5", eased_design, {"show_points": True}),
    ],
    ncols=2,
    suptitle="two spacings",
)

Each panel is (title, design, extra), where extra is passed through to plot_design for that panel alone. Keyword arguments to plot_grid itself apply to every panel, and a panel's own extra wins where the two disagree.

The premise, in one figure

from geomotif import ExponentialSpacing, PowerSpacing, SmoothstepSpacing
from geomotif.plotting import plot_comparison

fig = plot_comparison(
    spiral,
    [None, PowerSpacing(2.5), ExponentialSpacing(mode="out", strength=6), SmoothstepSpacing()],
)

Same curve, same number of points in every panel; only where they land changes. That is the whole library in one picture, and it is what geomotif demo runs.

The motif is built once and resampled per panel, rather than generated per panel — the geometry is identical in every one, and demonstrating that is the point.

Palettes

colors live in a Palette, a frozen dataclass with two instances shipped: LIGHT and DARK.

from geomotif.plotting import DARK, Palette, plot_design

plot_design(design, palette=DARK)

mine = Palette(
    page="#101014",
    surface="#191920",
    primary_ink="#eaeaf0",
    secondary_ink="#9a9aa8",
    muted="#4a4a58",
    gridline="#26262f",
    baseline="#33333f",
    series="#7aa2f7",
)
plot_design(design, palette=mine)

Gathering them into one value rather than leaving them as module constants is what makes a dark-mode figure a different argument instead of a different code path.

Saving without matplotlib

You do not need this module to get a picture. save_svg is pure standard library and produces a file every browser, editor and plotter toolchain reads. For a still image in particular, save_png is the recommended alternative — also pure standard library, no matplotlib required — when you want pixels rather than vectors. Reach for matplotlib when you want axes, a grid, labeled endpoints and a comparison figure — that is, when you are inspecting the points rather than drawing the design.