Best solution might be a new pie class, where texts and patches are implemented as seperate functions, to support kwargs for both:

class Pie()

def __init__(self, x, explode = None,
                    labels = None, colors = None, 
                    autopct = None, pctdistance = 0.6,
                    shadow = False, labeldistance = 1.1, 
                    startangle = None, radius = None)

    # assignment & validation here
    raise NotImplementedError

def create_wedges(self, **kwargs):
      # Create patch wedges & shadow
      raise NotImplementedError

def create_texts(self, **kwargs):
    # Create labels & 'autotexts'..
    raise NotImplementedError

def remove(self):
     raise NotImplementedError    

Could this fit with the existing API?

Please see the version of pie on the master branch. I think this is already addressed.

See issue #2923 .

I further consideration, I think have a pie class is a good idea, but for the purpose of artist wrangling after it is drawn.

In that case, I suppose to make it most compatible with existing function, the pie.__init__ method would handle plotting (so that the call signature is unaffected) and update() methods would be provided, which accept patch/text kwargs to apply changes?

Yes, that is what I had in mind. The mep would be for codifying how to do this in general and
related to the talk of moving towards a dom model for keeping track of artists.

This is daft, but I'm was trying to find out about MEP's - where they are/how they get written and I can't find anything.
Are MEP's and github issues one and the same?

no, MEPS are on the wiki: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/wiki#matplotlib-enhancement-proposals-meps

Related to https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/wiki/MEP25

HAving a go at starting a MEP for this:
https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/wiki/MEP-26

My thought was that this would be a specific case of what MEP25 is working on.

Hi,

This issue has been inactive for a while. What's the latest discussion on this? MEP25 was last updated in 2014, along with this issue. Thanks!

This issue has been marked "inactive" because it has been 365 days since the last comment. If this issue is still present in recent Matplotlib releases, or the feature request is still wanted, please leave a comment and this label will be removed. If there are no updates in another 30 days, this issue will be automatically closed, but you are free to re-open or create a new issue if needed. We value issue reports, and this procedure is meant to help us resurface and prioritize issues that have not been addressed yet, not make them disappear. Thanks for your help!