Embedded charts in PyCharm IPython console

Question

Is there a way to allow embedded Matplotlib charts in the IPython console that is activated within PyCharm? I'm looking for similar behavior to what can be done with the QT console version of IPython, i.e. ipython qtconsole --matplotlib inline

Answer 1

It doesn't look like you can do it: PyCharm does not use the 'qtconsole' of ipython, but either a plain text console (when you open the "Python console" tab in PyCharm) or ipython notebook (when you open a *.ipynb file). Moreover, PyCharm is done in Java, while to have an interactive plot Matplotlib needs to have a direct connection/knowledge/understanding of the underlying graphic toolkit used... Matplotlib doesn't support any Java based backend, so i guess Pycharm would need to "bridge" the native underlying toolkit...