How is order of items in matplotlib legend determined?

Question

I am having to reorder items in a legend, when I don\'t think I should have to. I try:

from pylab import *
clf()
ax=gca()
ht=ax.add_patch(Rectangle((1,1),1,1,         


        

Answer 1

The order is deterministic, but part of the private guts so can be changed at any time, see the code here (the self.* elements are lists of the artists that have been added, hence the handle list is sorted first by type, second by order they were added).

If you want to explicitly control the order of the elements in your legend then assemble a list of handlers and labels like you did in the your edit.