icarusz

It has to do with the structure of the information/inputs. Its more a DSL with a structure rather than a jumble of API arguments. So first few times out it may take some getting used to, but as that structure becomes clear it becomes more intuitive. Thats also why even with way more matplotlib examples in the world, LLM agents do better "guessing" how to use plotnine... or at least it was that way a few months ago when we were testing them head to head.

matplotlib is what most folks reach for by default, but I'd argue that's habit and popularity talking, not a real fit advantage. For a lot of plotting work, the grammar-of-graphics libraries — Altair, plotnine — may be the better tool for many people (and Agents); they just don't have the muscle memory behind them.

(Disclosure: I'm at Posit, which supports plotnine.)

This looks like a pretty huge upgrade. Getting finicky bit out of the users way is sooooo important!

Yes. They are sparklines. I actually asked Rich the author if they should just be called that in great_tables but he had some reasonable thoughts on why a distinct name made sense.