This is the second minor release in the Matplotlib 2.x series and the first
release with major new features since 1.5.
This release contains approximately 2 years worth of work by 275 contributors
across over 950 pull requests. Highlights from this release include:
- support for string categorical values
- export of animations to interactive javascript widgets
- major overhaul of polar plots
- reproducible output for ps/eps, pdf, and svg backends
- performance improvements in drawing lines and images
- GUIs show a busy cursor while rendering the plot
along with many other enhancements and bug fixes.