title: How to generate a Cocoa-recognized plot using matplotlib in Python on OS X (Leopard preferably)
body: <p>I'm not sure exactly what is going on under the hood, but here is my setup, example code,  and problem:</p>
  
  <h2>setup:</h2>
  
  <ul>
  <li>snow leopard (10.6.8)</li>
  <li>Python 2.7.2 (provide by EPD 7.1-2)</li>
  <li>iPython 0.11 (provided by EPD 7.1-2)</li>
  <li>matplotlib (provided by EPD 7.1-2)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <h2>example code:</h2>
  
  <pre><code>import numpy as np
  import pylab as pl
  x=np.random.normal(size=(1000,))
  pl.plot(x)
  </code></pre>
  
  <h2>problem:</h2>
  
  <p>I can't use the standard Mac OS X shorcuts to access the window generated by the plot command.  </p>
  
  <p>For example, I can't <kbd>Command</kbd>-<kbd>Tab</kbd> to the window. Thus, if the window is behind some other window, I need to <em>mouse</em> over to it! <kbd>Command</kbd>-<kbd>W</kbd> doesn't close it.</p>
  
  <p>Obviously, this is unacceptable. It seems like perhaps running Lion instead of Leopard might fix this, but i haven't upgraded yet. I feel like the problem has something to do with iPython generating windows that aren't fully Cocoa-aware in some sense, but I really know very little so I'm not particularly confident in this hypothesis.  </p>
  
  <p>Thus, any ideas on how to either resolve or get around this issue would be much appreciated.</p>