Announcing PyGMT v0.13.0, with improved support for non-ASCII characters and two new tutorials!
The PyGMT team is pushing forward with version v0.13.0! Here are some of the highlights
:
- Add new documentation section Technical Reference
and document the supported encodings and fonts - Tutorial for Draping a dataset on top of a topographic surface
(#3316) - Tutorial for Typesetting non-ASCII characters
(#3389)
Read through the changelog for the full list of changes. Installation/upgrade
instructions are at Installing β PyGMT! Note that this version is cross-compatible with GMT 6.3 - 6.5, but it requires Python 3.10+
, NumPy 1.24+, Pandas 1.5+, and Xarray 2022.09+ following SPEC 0. Go try it online at try-gmt
.
Nice enhancements
:
- Non-ASCII characters in ISO-8859-x can be used directly in PyGMT arguments and text strings passed to
Figure.text(#3310) - Tables of supported Fonts and Encodings and Non-ASCII Characters that you can copy and paste in your scripts.
As usual, please feel free to report any bugs
with the issue template on GitHub. Your feedback is what helps us to improve
! For example, this bug report at issue #3104 sparked off a major refactoring by @seisman at PR #3132 that removed a ton of workarounds in PyGMTβs codebase related to spaces and funny characters!
Updates on Intros, Tutorials, and Gallery examples
- Tutorial for Draping a dataset on top of a topographic surface
(#3316) by @yvonnefroehlich - Tutorial for Typesetting non-ASCII characters
(#3389) by @seisman - External resources Examples from Publications and Posters: Add tutorial in Portuguese and using PyGMT in Google Colab (#3360) by @andrebelem
Roadmap to v0.14.0
While the team has been busy refactoring the internals of PyGMT in recent releases, there are still lots of documentation and new features weβd like to add! Check out the good first issue label on GitHub or the list below for things you can help with!
-
Features/enhancements

- Wrap clip, coupe, earthtide, fitcircle, movie, polar, and sac
- Implement high-level methods of
Figure.plotandFigure.plot3d(#2797):Figure.scatter,Figure.hlines(#923) andFigure.vlines(#670),Figure.choropleth,Figure.errorbar,Figure.stem,Figure.fill_between - Implement high-level methods of
Figure.basemaporFigure.coast(#2831):Figure.scale_bar,Figure.directionrose,Figure.magneticrose
-
Documentation improvements

Please donβt be shy to reach out on GitHub if youβre interested in contributing
!
Upcoming deprecations
- v0.14.0
- Minimum Supported Versions: Dropping of GMT 6.3.0
Figure.grdcontour: Disallow passinglist[str]arguments to theannotationparameter (e.g.[100, "e", "f10p", "gred"]), pass in a string like100+e+f10p+gredinstead (FutureWarning raised since PyGMT v0.12.0)pygmt.helpers: Remove thebuild_arg_stringfunction, usebuild_arg_listinstead (FutureWarning raised since PyGMT v0.12.0)- Remove the
sequence_plusconverter, only used for theannotationparameter ofFigure.grdcontour(FutureWarning raised since PyGMT v0.12.0)
- v0.15.0
pygmt.clib: Remove theopen_virtual_filemethod, useopen_virtualfileinstead (FutureWarning raised since PyGMT v0.11.0)pygmt.clib: Remove thevirtualfile_from_datamethod, usevirtualfile_ininstead
- v0.16.0
Figure.grdcontour: Remove parameterinterval, uselevelsinstead (FutureWarning raised since PyGMT v0.12.0)
- v1.0.0
- Short form aliases (e.g.
R) will not work if long form aliases (e.g.region) are available (SyntaxWarning raised since PyGMT v0.4.0, see #1316)
- Short form aliases (e.g.
The compatibility matrix for GMT, Python, and the required core package dependencies NumPy, Pandas, and Xarray is listed at Minimum Supported Versions, so make sure you keep things up to date!
Conference presentations/workshops/sprints
The GMT and PyGMT teams are organizing an AGU pre-conference workshop for GMT and PyGMT
in Washington D.C.
on 2024-12-08, so mark your calendars
! βPREWS9 Mastering Geospatial Visualizations with GMT/PyGMT at AGU Fall Meeting 2024β will be an in-person, full-day workshop, for details have a look at Workshops β The Generic Mapping Tools.
Besides this there will be an union-wide memorial session for Paul Wessel βU019 - The impact of GMT in the Earth, Ocean and Space sciences: Whatβs next?β during the AGU fall meeting, with eight invited talks and likely some poster presentations on various topics of the GMT world.
P.S. Share the word on Instagram @genericmappingtools
and ResearchGate!

