Thanks for doing this.
In anticipation of additional Seaborn styles being added, should the file name include some indication of the particular variant?
Maybe we need some more thought about how to categorize, organize, and name styles.

I was thinking of calling this one simply seaborn since it is the default style when importing seaborn, then adding seaborn-white, seaborn-whitegrid, and seaborn-ticks.

Attn @mwaskom: comments?

I would prefer the current default seaborn style to be called seaborn-darkgrid (or however you choose to indicate the variant).

Do matplotlib stylesheets have any facility for handling style and element scale ("context" in seaborn, regrettably) independently?

There is MEP26 that is being ironed out, if that is what you are thinking?
http://matplotlib.org/devdocs/devel/MEP/MEP26.html

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Michael Waskom notifications@github.com
wrote:

I would prefer the current default seaborn style to be called
seaborn-darkgrid (or however you choose to indicate the variant).

Do matplotlib stylesheets have any facility for handling style and element
scale ("context" in seaborn, regrettably) independently?

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#4570 (comment)
.

I just mean that the "seaborn styles" are really the product of two independent sets of rc parameters.

The scaling and colors could be split into two different stylesheets, which would allow users to

plt.style.use("seaborn-darkgrid")
plt.style.use("seaborn-paper")

Actually good point, you also need a third piece: the color cycle palette.

Would it be worth adopting the scale style sheets wholesale so

plt.style.use('seaborn-darkgrid")
plt.style.use("media-paper")
# plt.style.use("media-interactive")
# plt.style.use("media-talk")

?

The color cycle might be complicated / should embrace #4258 (which needs to be replaced by a PR to add https://github.com/tacaswell/cycler (which needs to end up on pypi and move to the mpl org) ).

I don't think seaborn does anything as complicated as your cycler tool, it just sets the color cycle independently from the axes style and plotting context.

Right, leave cycler out of this.

@petebachant Can you split the style sheet up as discussed (base axes settings, font/tick sizes, color cycle)?

There is a PR in to use styles in styles (#4240 ) which can be used to create composite style sheets if we want that as well.

Sure, I will split the style sheets up.

Just split the darkgrid style into three sheets for the scaling, colors, and palette. What do you guys think? Should I make the other Seaborn variants?

👍 to both this and the other variants.

@petebachant I am going to merge this as-is, can you make a new PR with the other variants ?

Will do!