How to solve PySurfer installation issues on Anaconda 1.8 with MacOSX 10.7.5

Installation issues

If you try to install PySurfer using pip you will get the following error:

pip install pysurfer

Downloading/unpacking pysurfer
Downloading pysurfer-0.4.tar.gz
Running setup.py egg_info for package pysurfer
Qt internal error: qt_menu.nib could not be loaded. The .nib file should be placed in   QtGui.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/  or in the resources directory of your application bundle.
Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
Qt internal error: qt_menu.nib could not be loaded. The .nib file should be placed in QtGui.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/  or in the resources directory of your application bundle.

In order to solve it, download and install the master branch from github
(PySurfer-master.zip, version 0.5.dev, the pysurfer available with pip is version is 0.4).

Execution issues

Now that the installation issue is solved, let's try to execute PySurfer in IPython:

ipython --pylab qt

you will get the following error:

[TerminalIPythonApp] WARNING | Eventloop or matplotlib integration failed. Is matplotlib installed?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
/Users/user/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/shellapp.pyc in <lambda>(key)
	221         shell = self.shell
	222         if self.pylab:
--> 223             enable = lambda key: shell.enable_pylab(key, import_all=self.pylab_import_all)
	224             key = self.pylab
	225         elif self.matplotlib:

/Users/user/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.pyc in enable_pylab(self, gui, import_all, welcome_message)
   2924         from IPython.core.pylabtools import import_pylab
   2925 
-> 2926         gui, backend = self.enable_matplotlib(gui)
   2927 
   2928         # We want to prevent the loading of pylab to pollute the user's

/Users/user/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.pyc in enable_matplotlib(self, gui)
   2885                 gui, backend = pt.find_gui_and_backend(self.pylab_gui_select)
   2886 
-> 2887         pt.activate_matplotlib(backend)
   2888         pt.configure_inline_support(self, backend)
   2889 

/Users/user/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/pylabtools.pyc in activate_matplotlib(backend)
	240     matplotlib.rcParams['backend'] = backend
	241 
--> 242     import matplotlib.pyplot
	243     matplotlib.pyplot.switch_backend(backend)
	244 

/Users/user/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/pyplot.py in <module>()
	 96 
	 97 from matplotlib.backends import pylab_setup
---> 98 _backend_mod, new_figure_manager, draw_if_interactive, _show = pylab_setup()
	 99 
	100 

/Users/user/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/__init__.pyc in pylab_setup()
	 26     # imports. 0 means only perform absolute imports.
	 27     backend_mod = __import__(backend_name,
---> 28                              globals(),locals(),[backend_name],0)
	 29 
	 30     # Things we pull in from all backends

/Users/user/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/backend_qt4agg.py in <module>()
	 11 
	 12 from backend_agg import FigureCanvasAgg
---> 13 from backend_qt4 import QtCore, QtGui, FigureManagerQT, FigureCanvasQT,\
	 14      show, draw_if_interactive, backend_version, \
	 15      NavigationToolbar2QT

/Users/user/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/backend_qt4.py in <module>()
	 23     figureoptions = None
	 24 
---> 25 from qt4_compat import QtCore, QtGui, _getSaveFileName, __version__
	 26 
	 27 backend_version = __version__

/Users/user/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/qt4_compat.py in <module>()
	 34 # Now perform the imports.
	 35 if QT_API in (QT_API_PYQT, QT_API_PYQTv2):
---> 36     import sip
	 37     if QT_API == QT_API_PYQTv2:
	 38         if QT_API_ENV == 'pyqt':

ImportError: No module named sip

Despite this error, ipython is still working, but if you try

from surfer import Brain
brain=Brain('fsaverage','both','inflated')

The resulting TVTK Scene will contain nothing, and it will be completely frozen.
I think this error is related with pyqt (in this case ipython is using pyqt as frontend), so in order to solve it, let's change the ipython frontend to pyside. This can be done by creating the following variable in the shell (to make it permanent, please include the following line in the .bash_profile file and source the file or "close and open the terminal"):

export QT_API=pyside

Let's verify that our solution is really working:

ipython --pylab qt 

As you can see, this time everything is working fine!, including PySurfer!

from surfer import Brain
brain=Brain('fsaverage','both','inflated')

Let's verify the backend that we are using:

In [1]: matplotlib.rcParams['backend']
Out[1]: 'Qt4Agg'

In [2]: matplotlib.rcParams['backend.qt4']
Out[2]: 'PyQt4'

Using PySide as backend also works fine:

In [6]: matplotlib.rcParams['backend.qt4']='PySide'

Let's use PySurfer from the ipython notebook:

ipython notebook --pylab=qt

Everything works fine!. In case you get a frozen window when you try to interact with the TVTK scene, you can explicitly integrate the qt event loop in the ipython event loop, by explicitly adding the following magic method invocation to your notebook:

%gui qt