• Provide access to the GMT C API from Python
• Use GMT modules for plotting and processing through Python
• Use native Python data types (numpy arrays, strings, pandas Dataframes, etc) for input and output
• Integration with the Jupyter notebook through display hooks

Each GMT module has a function in the gmt package. Command-line arguments are passes as function keyword arguments. Data can be passed as file names or in-memory data. Calling gmt.show() gets a PNG image back and embeds it in the Jupyter notebook.

Example usage:

import numpy as np
import gmt

data = np.loadtxt('data_file.csv')

cpt = gmt.makecpt(C="red,green,blue", T="0,70,300,10000")
gmt.pscoast(R='g', J='N180/10i', G='bisque', S='azure1', B='af', X='c')
gmt.psxy(input=data, S='ci', C=cpt, h='i1', i='2,1,3,4+s0.02')
gmt.show(dpi=600)

General layout of the Python package:

gmt/
    core/  # Package with low-level wrappers for the C API

    modules/  # Defines the functions corresponding to GMT modules

Use GMT_Open_Virtual_File for input and output. Get kwarg dict and transform into the command-line string. Pass all that to the ctypes-wrapped GMT API function. Convert output back to Python. Return.