matplotlib/matplotlib — pull request #1125 by dmcdougall (2012-08-21 13:05:15+00:00)
Title: Reduce object-oriented boilerplate for users

Now, one can work with the default backend to create figures, without
the need to attach a canvas manually. For example:

```python
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('agg')
from matplotlib.figure import Figure

fig = Figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1)
ax.plot([1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3])
fig.savefig('oo.png')
```

This is an attempt at resolving issue #1094.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what implications this has on `pyplot` and `pylab`, but 'it just works' for me, and I tried the `MacOSX`, `Agg` and `PDF` backends.